Warfare, Crusade and Conquest in the Middle Ages (Variorum Collected Studies) 9781472428202, 9780367879471, 147242820X

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Also in the Variorum Collected Studies Series:

PETER W. EDBURY Law and Histmy in the Latin East

JAMES M. POWELL The Papacy, Frederick II and Communal Devotion in Medieval Italy

CHRISTOPHER TYERMAN The Practices of Crusading Image and Action from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries

JURGEN SARNOWSKY On the Military Orders in Medieval Europe Structures and Perceptions

ROBERT IRWIN Mamluks and Crusaders Men of the Sword and Men of the Pen

CHRISTOPHER D. SCHABEL Greeks, Latins, and the Church in Early Frankish Cyprus

CLIFFORD J. ROGERS Essays on Medieval Military History Strategy, Military Revolutions and the Hundred Years War

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH Crusaders and Settlers in the Latin East

JAMES M. POWELL The Crusades, The Kingdom of Sicily, and the Mediterranean

ANTHONY LUTTRELL Studies on the Hospitallers after 1306 Rhodes and the West

BENJAMIN Z. KEDAR Franks, Muslims and Oriental Christians in the Latin Levant Studies in Frontier Acculturation

JEAN RICHARD Francs et Orientaux dans le monde des croisades

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES

Warfare, Crusade and Conquest in the Middle Ages

John France

John France

Warfare, Crusade and Conquest in the Middle Ages

I~ ~~o~~~~n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2014 by Ashgate Publishing 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 4RN 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 100 17

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business First issued in paperback 2019

This edition© 2014 David Jacoby David Jacoby has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: 2014930356

ISBN 978-1-4724-2820-2 (hbk) ISBN 978-0-367-87947-1 (pbk)

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS1045

CONTENTS Acknowledgements Introduction Close order and close quarter: the culture of combat in the West

Vlll

ix

498-517

The International History Review 27, 2005

II

Property, warfare and the Renaissance of the twelfth century

73- 84

Journal of the Haskins Society II, I998 (published 2003)

III

A changing balance: cavalry and infantry, 1000-1300

153-177

Revista de Hist6ria das ldeias 30, 2009

IV

The composition and raising of the armies of Charlemagne

61-82

Journal ofMedieval Military History I, 2002

V

The military history of the Carolingian period

81- 99

Revue beige d 'Histoire militaire 26, 1985

VI

The occasion of the coming of the Normans to southem Italy

185-204

Journal ofMedieval History 17, 1991

VII

The battle of Carcano: the event and its importance War in History 6, 1999

245- 261

vi

VIII

CONTENTS

Holy war and holy men: Erdmann and the lives of the saints

193-208

The Experience of Crusading, 1: Western Approaches (Essays Presented to Jonathan Riley-Smith on his Sixty-fifth Birthday), eds M Bull and N Housley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003

IX

Patronage and the appeal of the First Crusade

5-20

The First Crusade: Origins and Impact, ed. J Phillips. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 199 7 (reprinted in The Crusades: The Essential Readings, ed. T Madden. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002, 194-208)

X

The departure ofTatikios from the crusader army

137-147

Bulletin of the Institute ofHistorical Research 44, 1971

XI

The crisis of the First Crusade: from the defeat of Kerbogah to the departure from Arqa

276-308

Byzantion 40, 1970

XII

Two types of vision on the First Crusade: Stephen of Valence and Peter Bartholemew

1- 20

Crusades 5, 2006

XIII

The election and title of Godfrey de Bouillon

321-329

Canadian Journal ofHistory I Annates canadiennes d 'his to ire 18, 1983

XIV

The First Crusade as a naval enterprise

389-397

The Mariners Mirror 83, 1997

XV

Arab Muslim reactions to Turkish authority in northern Syria, 1085- 1128 [with Nic Morton]

1- 38

First Publication

XVI

Logistics and the Second Crusade Logistics of Warfare in the Age ofthe Crusades, ed. JH. Pryor. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006

77- 93

CONTENTS

XVII Warfare in the Mediterranean region in the age of the crusades, 1095-1291: a clash of contrasts

vii

9-26

The Crusades and the Near East: Cultural Histories, ed. C. Kostick. London: Routledge, 2011

XVIII Surrender and capitulation in the Middle East in the age of the crusades

73- 84

How Fighting Ends: A History of Surrender, eds H Afflerbach and H Strachan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012

1-18

Index

This volume contains xiv + 358 pages

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

The articles in this volume, as in all others in the Variorum Collected Studies Series, have not been given a new, continuous pagination. In order to avoid confusion, and to facilitate their use where these same studies have been referred to elsewhere, the original pagination has been maintained wherever possible. Each article has been given a Roman number in order of appearance, as listed in the Contents. This number is repeated on each page and is quoted in the index entries.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following persons, institutions, journals and publishers for their kind permission to reproduce the papers included in this volume: Taylor and Francis (www.tandfonline.com) (for articles I, VI, XIV and XVII); Journal ofthe Haskins Society, and Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge (II); Istituto de Hist6ria e Teoria das Ideias, University of Coimbra (III); Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge (IV); the Royal Army Museum, Brussels (V); SAGE Publications, Ltd (VII); Cambridge Univesity Press (VIII); Manchester University Press (IX); the Institute of Historical Research, University of London (X); Peter van Deun, Byzantion, Leuven (XI); the Canadian Journal ofHistory I Annates canadiennes d 'histoire, Saskatoon, SK (XIII); and Oxford University Press (XVIII). Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

INTRODUCTION This is at first sight a pretty disparate range of essays reflecting the changing emphases of my interests over somewhat more than 40 years. 'The departure of Tatikios' (1971) and 'The crisis of the First Crusade' (1970) sprang very clearly from my doctorate, a critical edition of an eyewitness account of the First Crusade by Raymond of Aguilers. My supervisor was Professor Bernard Hamilton of the University of Nottingham to whom I would like here to express my gratitude for steering me to the First Crusade. This great event, the very origin of the crusading movement, has always been an obsession and its military aspects were always important to me, hence also 'The First Crusade as a naval enterprise'(1997). 'The election and title of Godfrey de Bouillon' is a contribution to an important controversy arising from the success of the First Crusade. But although I have worked so much on military matters, war is always a reflection of the society which wages it, and the crusade in particular can only be understood in terms of the mentalities of its participants, hence work like 'Patronage and the appeal of the First Crusade' (1997), and 'Two types of vision on the First Crusade'(2006). Much as I enjoy working on war, I have always fought shy of the title 'military historian' because all specialized interests are, or should be, no matter how valuable in themselves, a way into understanding the medieval world and outlook. ' Holy war and holy men' (2003) is an attempt to analyze the attitudes of Latin Christendom to violence in the centuries before the crusades. This study was made possible through the generosity of the Leverhulme Trust, and was the fruit of working through the 70 tomes of the Acta Sanctorum. But I have always had a strong interest in what might be called the 'metalbashing' side of medieval warfare, in understanding how war worked and why. When I was an undergraduate the waging of war tended to be dismissed by medievalists as nothing more than an undirected scramble, barely wmthy of the proper historian's notice. There were exceptions: a vast literature was devoted to Hastings because it was seen as changing the world. While this was welcome, it also had the effect of making people focus on great events, so that they dismissed military activity which lacked what they took to be decisive and major events as nugatory. At the time 'The military history of the Carolingian period' ( 1985) was written, Charlemagne's conquests were still seen as largely the result of charging knights demonstrating their superiority over the mere foot of the 'barbarian peoples'. This article, which owes much to my friend

X

INTRODUCTION

Bernard Bachrach, was an attempt to emphasise the role of footsoldiers, and I hope it has contributed to a more balanced view of the Carolingian military and its methods. I also remarked in it the importance of what were often dismissed as unimportant events, campaigns without battle or siege, something which has since become a major theme in my thinking. This article was reviewed very kindly by that most distinguished of military historians, J.F.Verbruggen who restated forcefully his views on cavalry supremacy in the same volume of the journal in which it appeared. Carolingian warfare has been the subject of vigorous research and much controversy in recent years, and much of this has focussed on the size of armies. In 'The composition and raising of the armies of Charlemagne' (2002), published in the The Journal of Medieval Military History of which I later became an editor, I made clear that I am a minimalist though I believe that on occasion larger forces could be raised. However, the main thrust of the article was an analysis which suggested that the size and make-up of Carolingian armies was determined less by military potential, the desires of the king or the demands of any given situation, than the state of relations between the ruler and his most important subjects who, one way or another, controlled military manpower. In support of the minimalist position on the size of medieval armies, it has often been argued that truly big forces could never have been fed, and this highlights the importance oflogistics, a theme in which runs through my work. This has the effect of emphasising another theme, that medieval warfare was more than a mere thoughtless scrap on a muddy field, but the product of careful thought about how to use force, and the huge investment which it represented. Sustaining an army was particularly difficult on crusade, and' Logistics and the Second Crusade'(2006) is an attempt to investigate this very complex subject for which are sources are wholly inadequate. I am pleased to be associated with a much more scientific and ambitious attempt to solve the mysteries of military subsistence, the 'Medieval Logistics Project' co-directed by Professor John Haldon of Princeton. Reflecting on the obvious fact that medieval rulers were not stupid enough to play with armies like toys, led to a very substantial article, 'Property, warfare and the Renaissance of the twelfth century' (1998). This investigated why it was that while governmental administration and ecclesiastical organization were becoming elaborated and systematic in the twelfth century, there was little evidence of the same processes being applied to warfare. In short, why in England it was necessary to write a 'Book of the Exchequer' for the instruction of new administrators, but nothing like a 'Book of the Knight' ever appeared. The answer suggested arose from my view of the nature of medieval society. For aristocrats, irrespective of whether they were really soldiers or not, military appearance was a mark of status, even if it amounted to no more than a crenulated house. To systematise would

INTRODUCTION

XI

have smacked too much of the kind of developments by lawyers and clergy which were hemming in their privileges and powers. As a result warfare, and particularly military education, could not be institutionalised. In any case it is difficult to see what kind of institution could have been developed. Instead young men learned from older heads, and from practice - 'on the job', as it were. What they had to learn was in fact a fairly well-defined style of war which in a 2005 article, 'Close order and close quarter: the culture of combat in the West', was defined as 'agro-urban', a phrase I owe to my friend Clifford Rogers of the US Military Academy West Point. This way of war depended upon armies in which cavalry formed only a small but important part, supported by much larger infantry formations. For the most part they preferred to lay waste as a means of persuading their enemy and were more usually occupied in siege than battle. When battle came such a slow moving force was not capable of much manoeuvre and sought to force the close-quarter encounter as rapidly as possible. Agro-urban warfare was not confined to Western Europe, but the concentration on heavy cavalry was a peculiar characteristic of that area. This was not a static and unchanging style, for as shown in 'A changing balance: cavalry and infantry, 1000-1300' (2009), the increasing use of professional troops, some of whom we would characterize as mercenaries, produced tactical changes. Advancing technology made some f01tresses stronger, and at the same time brought about improved methods of attack. War was dominated by battle because any army had to be prepared to face its enemy in the open field, but this does not mean that it was always, or even frequently, sought as a means of resolving conflict. The staple of medieval warfare was ravaging- the destruction of the enemy's economic base and the erosion of his control over the countryside. It could be augmented by siege, but even that demanded a degree of organization which armies, recruited for only short periods, lacked. In medieval Europe battle was rare, but that does not mean that it never happened. At times outright conflict of this kind was inevitable, notably, as in 1066, when conquest was sought and resisted. Civil wars sometimes, but not always, generated confrontations in the open field because it was often the only way to resolve them. Contemporaries regarded them as the greatest of military experiences and poets celebrated them. But to a surprising degree they were usually meager in their results, and often passed quickly from memory. 'The battle of Carcano: the event and its importance'(1999) was about just such a battle, and in effect was a kind of historical resurrection. This battle, fought on 9 August 1060, was an episode in the conflict between Frederick 1 Barbarossa and Milan and was essentially a struggle over possession of the fortress of Carcano. The Milanese triumphed, but their victory had no serious

xii

INTRODUCTION

consequences and the whole episode was quickly forgotten. No wonder soldiers tended to avoid the field of honour where chance played such a great part. 'The occasion of the coming of the Normans to southern Italy' (1991) was a much more important and serious event. The Norman dominion in the south was also a very complex and gradual process. The sources bearing upon its start are very obscure and contradictory. As a result historians have differed sharply on the origins of the Norman incursion. They seem to me to reflect stories about family origins and I remain convinced that the traditional date of 1017 is correct. But it is interesting that this was a different kind of conquest - so very different from 1066 which was largely settled by a single battle. A process of infiltration and intermarriage with the existing aristocracy, punctuated by violent episodes seems to have been the pattern. But of course the most ambitious conquests of the age were the crusades, attempts to seize and secure the Holy Land and, above all, the sacred city of Jerusalem. The crusades precipitated a fascinating collision of military styles, truly a clash of opposites in every sense of the word. This is the burden of 'Warfare in the Mediterranean region in the age of the crusades, I 095- 1291 : a clash of contrasts' (2011 ). The western armies which attacked the Middle East consisted of heavy cavalry supported by masses of infantry. In the heat and open spaces of the Middle East such bodies of men had limited capacity for manoeuvre. By contrast the Turks were steppe horsemen, essentially mounted archers, who wheeled and jockeyed for advantage, using their bows to weaken the enemy and rapid movement to lure him into breaking formation. Once this had happened they and their more heavily armed companions would fight at close-quarters to annihilate the enemy. The First Crusade had considerable luck and learned to take steps to prevent envelopment and to muster its men so that infantry protected the vulnerable horses of the knights. Because there were no schools of war, and because crusades were rare episodes, these lessons were not passed on, which is why crusade after crusade came to grief. By contrast, the settlers in the East adopted such tactics to their state of constant warfare. In the open field their infantry protected the cavalry in what Smail called the 'fighting march' which enabled them to pass through the enemy, choosing when to give battle, if at all. Their mass cavalry charge was a new phenomenon possible only in a society so constantly at war that there was an acceptance of tactical discipline. Their ranks were stiffened by two unique institutions, the Monastic Military Orders of the Hospital and the Temple. These two huge organizations channelled the resources of the West into their standing armies, something not known in Europe since Roman times. Each Order could raise about 300 men: it is worth recalling that in the 1190s Richard the Lionheart tried to persuade his nobles to pay taxes in lieu of military service, with the aim of raising a standing force - of 300 knights, and failed. And the Orders

INTRODUCTION

Xlll

not only sustained this kind of field army but constructed mighty fortresses of innovative designs. The kingdom of Jerusalem was small, but it was an obstinate and tough enemy to Islam and lasted for nearly 200 years. There is no doubt that the warfare between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East was bitter and more savage, as that great historian of the Latin East, William ofTyre remarked: War is waged differently and less vigorously between men who hold the same law and faith. For even if no other cause for hatred exists, the fact that the Combatants do not share the same articles of faith is sufficient reason for constant quarrelling and enmity.'

But in the 12th and 13th centuries war, even ideological war, could not be waged as continuously and consistently as on the Eastern Front in World War II. Armies were enormously expensive and therefore for the most part raised only for short terms. Battles were chancy and often inconclusive in their results, while sieges exacted a massive blood tax on besiegers. In these circumstances it was often, as I suggested in 'Surrender and capitulation in the Middle East in the age of the crusades' (2012), the wiser course to resort to surrender on terms. The laws of war, at least as they applied to siege, were actually observed more than might be expected in the warfare of the crusading era. In retrospect the most astonishing thing about the crusades was that the First Crusade (1095-99) succeeded in capturing Jerusalem. It has always been recognized that this was in part because Islam at the time was divided. But of course Islam had almost always been divided. And the crusaders were only in the East in response to the call of the Byzantine Emperor Alexius Cornnenus for troops to exploit the rifts that had appeared in this rival power. But in general historians have confined themselves to noting the break-up of the Seljuk Empire and its effects in Syria and Palestine. However, there were other divisions in Islam. It has long been recognized that the Turks were a new and alien ruling elite in the Middle East, but the ethnic tensions aroused by their dominion have not been explored. Moreover such tensions, and the conflicts between Seljuk branches, were exacerbated by religious conflicts and strong regional interests. In these circumstances governmental legitimacy was clearly at issue. This multi-layered fragmentation goes far to explaining not merely the success of the First Crusade, but what we might call Fulcher's Question:

1 William of Tyre, 13.16, A History of Deeds done beyond the Sea by William of Tyre tr. E.A.Babcock and A.C.Krey, 2 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943) 2.25 (Book 13, Chap 16).

xiv

INTRODUCTION Why did so many people and so many kingdoms fear to attack our little kingdom and our humble people? Why did they not gather from Egypt, from Persia, fi·om Mesopotamia, and from Syria at least a hundred times a hundred thousand fighters to advance courageously against us, their enemies? Why did they not, as innumerable locusts in a little field, so completely devour and destroy us?2

It was this which inspired my colleague Nic Morton and myself to seek an

answer. We started to investigate more deeply the problems of Islam in the early crusader period and this has now resulted in 'Arab Muslim reactions to Turkish authority in northern Syria, 1085-1128'. We are painfully aware of the limitations of our investigation, but it is the kind of analysis which is long overdue. From the perspective of a historian with strong military interests, it is always as well to remember that an army is only as strong as its enemies permit, and we suggest that the crusaders should be seen in this light. Warfare and crusading have dominated my work throughout my professional life. But this writing has been informed by the general context of historical writing on the Middle Ages. Medievalists strive to understand a now very remote period, and almost any piece of work will cast light on some aspect of what they are studying. We are all specialists, but war, and particularly its conduct in the Middle East, were of immense importance to medieval people. I hope, therefore, that those who study them will find these essays of value in their work. I would like to end by thanking Ashgate and John Smedley for giving me this opportunity to republish them in this collection. JOHN FRANCE Swansea July 2014

2 Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana ed. H. Hagenemyer (Heidelberg, 1913), 388- 9, English translation F.R.Ryan and H.S.Fink, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem 1095-1127 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969)

I Close Order and Close Quarter: The Culture of Combat in the West

0

NE IS NOT surprised at the interest shown in a supposedly 'Western Way of War', because the European Union and the United States appear to hold a military supremacy of an unprecedented kind. Any state wishing to challenge their dominance has no cho~ce but to copy them: China's purchase of an aircraft carrier from Russia exemplifies imitation as the sincerest form of flattery. But the triumphalist tone of some of the books explaining the supremacy, in particular Victor Davis Hanson's work, is worrying. Hanson argues that war is shaped not by inherent military probability, or by other mundane considerations, but by culture/ a flexible word of which the meaning has varied greatly across time. If it once denoted simply the higher intellectual activities of the elites of various societies, anthropology and sociology have extended it to include all of the products of the human mind and practice. Thus, the salient characteristics of a society define the way in which it thinks about and wages war. In Cossack society, according to John Keegan, culture and war were coterminous. 2 John A. Lynn, ifhe agrees with Hanson about nothing else, concurs that culture in the widest sense conditions the nature of war. But Lynn, who looks at specific aspects of culture and war and seeks to relate them, focuses on the mismatch between the discourse and the reality. 3 'We think, therefore we wage war accordingly, even if this is in opposition to all the salient facts' simplifies what he has to say, but not unjustly. The emphasis on culture has proved an effective counter to the technological determinism condemned in a famous review in Past and Present. 4 Nonetheless, it presents considerable difficulties. In Jeremy Black's words, 'culturally 1 V. D. Hanson, The Western Way of Wa1·: bifantry Battle in Classical Greece (Berkeley, 1989) and Why the West Has Won: Carnage and Culture from Salamis to Vietnam (London, 2001); C. H. Lemmon, 'Th e Campaign of 1066', in The Norman Conquest, Its Setting and Impact, ed. D. Whitelock (London, 1966), pp. 77-122. 2J. Keegan, A H istory of Warfare (New York, 1994), p. 5· 3 J. A. Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture (Cambridge, MA,2003), pp. xvii-xix. 4 P. Sawyer and R. Hilton, 'Technical D eterminism, the Stirrup, and the Plough', Past and Present, xxiv (1963), 90-100.

Originally published in The International History Review, 27.3 (2005): pp. 498- 51 7. (http://www.tandfon1ine.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07075332.2005 .964 1069).

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The Culture of Combat

specific understandings of war and victory are difficult to recover for distant times. ' 1 The culturalist approach can be merely trite: the statement that war is influenced by the dominant characteristics of the societies that wage it. It can also tend both to an alternative determinism, and too closely to racism. 2 The contemporary radical right has adopted culture as a euphemism for the blunter formulations of an earlier age. To make effective use of culture in its widest sense, we need not only to identify the traits that influence war, but also the factors that culture cannot circumscribe.

***** In one way, culture undoubtedly shapes war. Throughout history, among most cultures and peoples, war has been the monopoly of ruling elites, which have almost always been militarized because the military function was so important that it dominated the state. Victory was the validation for the elites' rule and even a moral justification for their being. Roman emperors were normally generals: Julian the Apostate, for example, tried to restore paganism and pursued victory against Persia as a means of clothing his rule in glory. 3 Even though war always involved people from outside the elites, the profundity of the chasm that separated them from their betters is illustrated by Odo of Deuil's comment on the ambush in 1148 of the Second Crusade: 'For lords to die so that their servants might live would have been an incident calling for lamentation. ' 4 China offers a rare example of a major power whose elites were not primarily military. Although successive dynasties, often from outside the Middle Kingdom, brought with them revivals of military spirit, the Confucian elite scorned warfare and accorded only the lowest prestige to warriors. Its attitude was reinforced by long periods when the Chinese empire faced no external threat. As a result, there were frequent cycles of military decline and a tendency to rely on defence as new dynasties were assimilated by the Confucian bureaucracy. Even so, down to modern times China was a great military power, the one in which gunpowder was discovered. 5 Thus, in general, warfare was shaped by the interaction between the needs of military elites, geographic and climatic circumstances, and the available technology. Rarely will the masses be involved in the 'converse of war'. 1

J. Black, Rethinking Military History (London, 2004), p. 15.

Seej. Black, 'Determinisms and Other Issues', Journal ofMilitary History, lxviii (2004}, 1217-32. 3 R. Smith, Julian's Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action ofJulian the Apostate (London, 1995), pp. 6-9. 4 Odo ofDeuil, The Journey of Louis VII to the East, ed. V. G. Berry (New York, 1948}, p . 119. 5 Cambridge History of China: V, VI, ed. H. Franke and D. Twitchett (Cambridge, 1994}, esp. the chapters by J. Needham. 2

I soo To that extent, war was shaped by the culture of the rich and powerful. For the Middle Ages, few cultural constructs are more obvious, enduring, and powerful than chivalry, which R. W. Kaeuper defines as a 'mutually reinforcing fusion of several major functions, roles, and rights'.1 It exalted the military role of the knightly cavalryman, and the mental attitudes it fostered have been blamed for France's defeats in the Hundred Years War and for the disastrous cavalry charges at Halmyros in 1311 and Nicopolis in 1396. But knightly cavalry cannot be dismissed as a cultural construct that melted before new reality - or, if it can, it melted very slowly - because it won battles as late as Ceresole in April 1544· 2 Even though Edward III adopted radically novel approaches to battle and to the conduct of war, including the systematic use of archers drawn from the poorer ranks of society, he was no military revolutionary: he was encrusted with chivalric values. The haughty independence of the hidalgos of Castile of the early fifteenth century had been replaced within a hundred years by a cult of service to the crown. If this change reflected a cultural change, it was one driven by the military and political success of the monarchy. The emphasis on culture as the setting for developments can mask the underlying realities that shaped it, such as climate and topography, whose impact upon human behaviour is not necessarily mediated by cultural constructs. Moreover, historians have not sufficiently recognized how slowly military technology changed. The vagueness inherent in the cultural approach is exemplified by Hanson. There can be no doubt that our culture owes much to ancient Greece. 3 But we have inherited only parts of Greek thinking, and those almost always indirectly. Medieval knowledge of the ancient world was limited, and interpreted in a highly selective way. As a result, medieval society developed its own institutions, such as the university, and gave new forms and shapes to what it knew of the ancient world. To say that the West acquired its ideas offreedom from the Greeks, for example, is to simplifY: it would be more accurate to say that early modern study of the ancient world grafted aspects of the Greek concept of freedom and democracy on to medieval notions of the rights of particular groups and limits to sovereignty. The British House of Commons owes its origins to medieval privilege, and only its rhetoric to Greece. Furthermore, modern democracies do not exclude women and other gToups, as the polis did, nor do they embrace slavery. The West is not, except in a remote sense, the child of Greece: we derive our sense of continuity from the Roman world. 1 R. W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Vioknce in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1999), p. 302. B.S. Hall, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe (Baltimore, 1997), pp. 185-90.

2

3 On the wider resonances of the Greek experience for US society, see P. Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course ofHistory (Harmondsworth, 2003).

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The Culture of Combat

The chroniclers of the North Italian cities, when they quarrelled with the Emperor Henry IV and various of his successors, reverted to the Roman model for their republics, not the Greek. 1 H anson is doubtless right to say that the hoplite represented the military incarnation of the culture of the Greek polis: most classical historians would agree with him. 2 However, the claim that the West has inherited the notion that war is best waged by agreement between free men derives from a failure to understand how exceptional the Greek polis was in this respect, and how short-lived was the practice. 3 Hoplites quickly evolved into different sorts of warriors in the service of imperial p owers. The West has no more inherited a style of war than it has inherited Greek (or more strictly Athenian) ideas about slavery or the position of women. In one work, Hanson ignores the Middle Ages, and in another, the period from the fall of Rome to the sixteenth century is reduced to the battle of Poi tiers. 4 It may be, as he suggests, that at Poitiers the Franks defeated their Muslim enemies by fighting as a solid mass of infantry, but we cannot be certain about that because our sources provide poor accounts of the battle; even its date is uncertain. Conventionally dated 732, it may have happened as late as 734. 5 Hanson offers us no means by which the tradition of consenting citizens agreeing to participate in war for mutual benefit was transmitted to subsequent generations, beyond the inference that it piggybacked on knowledge of and admiration for Greek ideas. Alas, H ellenophilism is a modern construct, distantly related to Greece, that had little influence over the military. The knights of the Bayeux Tapestry were not hoplites on horseback; nor did the victors of Agincourt have much in common with their predecessors at Salamis. To turn to an apparent clash of cultures, it is a simplification to say that crusading warfare represented a clash between two different styles of war. The crusaders relied to a considerable extent upon heavy cavalry whose set-piece charge was the intended culmination of any formal battle. They employed well-armed infantry to protect their cavalry, and made only limited use oflight cavalry, though this was increasing by the later twelfth I P. Brown, The World of L ate Antiqu ity (London, 1971), argues for a high degree of continuity between the ancient and medieval worlds. He is echoed for the military by B. S. Bachrach, ' Medieval Military Historiography' , in Companion to History, ed. M. Bentley (London, 1997), pp. 203-20. For a different view, see G. Halsall, Warfare and Society ,:n the Barbarian West, 450-900 (London, 2003). 2 See, e.g., M. M. Sage, Warfare in Ancient Greece (London, 1996), pp. 25-134. 3 V. D. Hanson, The Soul of Battle (New York, 1990) is a hymn to the notion of consensual battle, the theory that free men fight best because they have agreed to do so. The idea permeates all his other works. 4 Hanson, Why the West H as Won, pp. 135-69. 5 R. Collins, The Arab Conquest ofSpain (Oxford, 1989), p. 91; P. Fouracre, The Age of Charles Martel (London, 2000), pp. 87, 148; Chronicle of754, in Conquerors and Chroniclers ofEarly Medieval Spain, ed. K. B. Wolf (Liverpool, 1990), pp.m-6o.

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century. The Turks, who employed light cavalry in large numbers, looked more to manoeuvre in the approach to battle, and to the envelopment and isolation of enemy units before the close-quarter fighting began. The contrast should not be overstated. In encounter battles such as Mati Ayun on 10 June 1179, tactics had to be improvised, while the equipment of many of Saladin's ghulams resembled that of Western knights. Nonetheless, the Westerners relied more on mass and close formation in preparation for the close-order, close-quarter confrontation that was the normal culmination ofbattle. 1 Battle was only one aspect of war: in both Europe and the Middle East, the focus of fighting was ravaging and destruction, and in both areas, strong fortifications were the key to ruling the countryside. To capture them was difficult because they afforded great protection to their defenders, and any attacker would have to organize and support his army for a long effort. Moreover, the attacker could himself be attacked by a relieving force. Thus, the apparent contrast between styles of warfare was not as great as it may appear and was mostly evident in the approach to the crucial, and decisive, close-quarter phase of battle. In both East and West, readiness for battle governed the make-up of armies that had always to campaign with battle in mind, if not in intention. At heart, the differences between Eastern and Western styles of war were the result of climate, geography, and topography: 'Physical geography has a continuous, powerful, and profound effect on the nature and course of conflict. '2 The open spaces of the Middle East facilitated the raising oflight horses and provided them with room for manoeuvre, while the congested spaces and intrusive agriculture of western Europe, unsuited to such husbandry and tactics, lent themselves to the creative use of infantry and the short charges typical of heavy cavalry. The importance ofland-ownership in western Europe resulted in numerous fortifications that intensified this pattern of warfare. But in both East and West, the formation of the army was governed by the needs of the close-quarter battle, itself determined by the need to fight at close quarters with edged weapons. This picture of an apparent contrast between styles of war overlying a basic similarity should condition our approach to war as the organized activity of structured states. The prospect of battle governed the formation 1]. France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 157-9, and 'Crusading Warfare and Its Adaptation to Eastern Conditions in the Twelfth Century', Mediterranean H istorical Re11iew, xv (2000), 49-66; M. Barber, 'Frontier Warfare in the Latin Kingdom of J erusalem: The Campaign of Jacob's Ford, 1178-9', in The Crusades and Their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton , ed.]. France and W. Zajac (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 9-22. 2 H. A. Winters, G. E. Galloway, W.]. Reynolds, and D. W. Rhyne, Ba ttling the Elements: Weather and Terrain in. the Conduct of War (Baltimore, 1998 ), p. 4·

I The Culture of Combat

of armies that did not necessarily seek battle, but had to provide against it. Battle, before the modern age, was inevitably, in its crucial stage, a closequarter affair because missile weapons suffered from grave limitations. Some of these were technical: despite the long history of bows, ensuring uniformly capable weapons proved impossible. The transport of the vast supplies of arrows needed to sustain volley-fire raised considerable logistical problems. And armour and shields could protect the enemy.1 More important, in the absence of training facilities and standing armies, was the leaders' dependence until the sixteenth century on 'native skills' : men already skilled as archers were always in short supply. 2 The alternative weapon, the crossbow, mechanical and highly effective, was expensive and slow to fire, and therefore primarily useful in sieges. Notwithstanding the reliance on the bow, most killing had to be done at spear-length or closer. The conditions of the close-quarter b attle demanded dose-order deployment, both to provide the necessary psychological support for soldiers and enable them to help one another, and to enable their commanders to keep them (to a degree) beneath their gaze and under their control. Close order was not confined to infantry but under some circumstances also applied to cavalry. Alexander relied on such a formation against the Persians at Gaugamela in 331 BC and it became common in the Middle Ages. 3 This is not to deny the influence of culture. In the European West during the Middle Ages, the nobles' control of resources led to investment in military technology's being governed primarily, though not entirely, by their personal priorities. The result was the d evelopment of expensive articulated plate armour, the 'full steel' that preserved their lives. Battle was never the sole mode of warfare. V egetius counselled against it: 'It is preferable to subdue an enemy by famine, raids, and terror, than in battle where fortune tends to have more influence than bravery.'4 Commanders often took his advice. In many parts of the world and for long periods, economic warfare was the norm. Even H anson acknowledges the importance of building fortifications in the enemy's territory and destroying its agricultural infrastructure, the primary method of war in the longdrawn-out expansion of Christian Spain.5 Armies that combined ravag-ing 1

A. Ayton and P. Preston, 'Topograp hy and Archery: Further Reflections on the Battle of Crecy', in

The Battle ofCrecy, 1346, ed. A. Ayton and P. Preston (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 359-62, point out that, at Crecy, Edward III could supply 'only' half a million spare arrows at a time of relatively competent logistics. 2 R. Hardy, Longbow: A Social and Military History (Sparkford, 1992), pp. 75-81. 3 R. Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (London, 1973), pp. 234-41. 4 Vegetius, Epitome of M1:litary Science, trans. N. P. Milner (Liverpool, 1993), p. 108. 5 V. D. Hanson, Waifare and Agriculture in Clo.ssical Greece (Berkeley, 1983; 2nd ed. 1998), pp. 79102; F. Garcia Fitz, Castilla y Leon frente al Islam. Estrategias de expansi6n y Mcticas mil£tares (s•:glos XI-XIII) (Seville, 1998), esp. pp. 78-89.

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with attacks on castles or cities had to organize themselves for battle nonetheless, because they might be forced into one by their enemies. An obvious example is the battle ofPoitiers in 1356. The Black Prince was not seeking battle, or at least not battle with a major French force, when he embarked upon his great raid (chevauchee) across France; rather, he wanted to cause devastation and reward his followers with the proceeds. When it was clear that the French were ready to fight, he fled, to find himself trapped. He then offered to buy his freedom by abandoning his loot. The French then snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by attacking the strongly entrenched English army. Even when battle was neither contemplated nor fought, skirmishes, the inevitable consequence of a war of destruction, replicated their conditions. Battle was the dominant form of war, not because it was frequent but because its needs imposed themselves on armies. Its form was not culturally dependent; it took the form of the close-quarter encounter because of the technological constraints that imposed the close-order formation.

***** Western warfare is best understood in the light of the need to prepare and structure armies in a particular way. In the ancient world, war progressed beyond the level of brigandage, of small groups perhaps led by 'heroes' vying against one another, into a highly organized activity, a development that seems to have followed from cereal cultivation becoming the dominant economic activity. This took time, and historians have spoken of a 'chariot revolution' and even a 'horse revolution' during the period.! There is reason to be sceptical of these revolutions, largely because our sources for such remote periods are scanty. Nonetheless, even sources from the earliest of times recognize the need for group discipline and organization. In New Kingdom Egypt (c.1570-1050 Be), a substantial standing army was augmented at need by levies. Chariots seem to have formed an elite strike force, but infantry were organized in divisions of about five thousand, and the heavy troops, who fought in close order, were distinguished from skirmishers and archers. This was not the warfare of heroic individuals, nor was it ritual collision according to rules. Far away in China, about the year 500 Be, Sun Tzu opened his famous Art oJWarwith five 'constant factors', one of which is 'Method and Discipline ... the marshalling of an army in its proper subdivisions'. It forms one of the work's overarching themes. 2 For the importance of chariots in ancient Egypt, see A. M. Gnirs, 'Ancient Egypt', in War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, ed. K. fulaflaub and N. Rosenstein (Cambridge, MA, 1999), pp. 86-7. 2 B. McDermot, Waifare in Ancient Eg;ypt (Stroud, 2004) , pp. 118-22; R. B. Partridge, Fighting Pharaohs (Manchester, 2002), pp. 89-91; Sun Tzu, 1he Art of War, ed. L. Giles (New York, 2002), p . 1

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The hoplite phalanx was simply a particular style of dose-order fighting, one that could be peculiarly effective in the dose-quarter battle. While never the only style of warfare in classical Greece, it was the dominant one, and was so effective that Greek mercenaries were enlisted by the Persians. The Persian Empire never developed this style of war: it was a diverse land ruled by an aristocracy who fought on horseback, and its cavalry arm was immense.' Although its elites recognized the effectiveness of steady infantry, the emperors had little need to train native troops in this way when they could hire at need Greek mercenaries who would fight as well as they had fought in the service of their Greek cities. Both Macedonian and Persian cavalry fought in close order, but the infantry, the anchor of the Macedonian army, was no longer the simple phalanx portrayed by Hanson. It was trained to fight with the long pike, the sarissa, and, accordingly, lightly armoured and more mobile than the earlier hoplite forces. It operated in conjunction with light infantry, slingers, and archers who had exposed during the disastrous Syracuse campaign the vulnerability of the phalanx. Despite this development of a complex and fluid style of fighting, in which the actions of all arms are interrelated, the dose-quarter battle remained the centrepiece of the war. Alexander's genius was to maximize the effectiveness of the means of bringing it about. If his dose-order infantry formed the stable heart of his formations, the strike force was his closeorder cavalry that he handled infinitely better than did his enemies.2 To refer to the Roman legion as a phalanx is to simplify its structure. The legion was an all-arms (or at least most arms) unit, resembling a division from the First World War, and though a dose-order formation by naturf'. was highly flexible. Designed to fight against the large armies of other . 1editerranean powers, by the late imperial period its main task consisted of confronting smaller forces of 'barbarians', which led to its being reduced in size to about one thousand men and to increased reliance on light infantry and cavalry. The latter was also attributable to tactical developments that made cavalry more effective. But the army's aim in adapting to changing conditions was to maximize its impact in the dose-quarter battle. As Ammianus commented of the battle of Strasbourg in 358: 'our soldiers [remained] closely packed in fully-manned lines. ' 3 Vegetius, who was of the opinion that the recent emphasis on the use oflight infantry and cavalry had eroded discipline, pleaded in De re Militari for a return to the emphasis on dose-order infantry training. It seems astonishing that the western Roman army, which had displayed such vitality and adaptability, 40; R. D. S. Yates, ' Early China', in War and Sodety, ed. Raaflaub and Rosenstein, pp. 7-46. 1 P. Briant, 'The Achaemenid Empire', in War and Sodety, ed. Raaflaub and Rosenstein, pp . 105-28. 2 Lane Fox, Alexander the Great , pp. 99-101. 3 Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum, ed. J. C. Rolfe (London, 1950 ), i. 291.

I so6 should have vanished, to be succeeded by the ramshackle armies of early medieval Europe, whereas Byzantium developed a long-lasting and effective military force. 1 Medieval armies were as keen to achieve solid formations as their ancient predecessors because battle remained the culmination of war, and closeorder fighting the key to victory. Charlemagne's elite cavalry were defeated by the Saxons in 782 at the Siintel Mountain because they approached the enemy 'as if they were chasing runaways and going after booty instead of facing an enemy lined up for battle; everybody dashed as fast as his horse would carry him for the place outside the Saxon camp where the Saxons were standing in battle array. ' 2 By contrast, at Benevento in 1266, a wellorganized division of about eight hundred veteran German knights cut through the French ranks like a juggernaut. They had all but won the battle until Charles of Artiou urged his own cavalry to very close quarters, where French daggers triumphed over German long swords. 3 In no6, when Robert of Normandy was cornered by the far larger army of his brother, Henry, at Tinchebrai, he chose to attack. Being 'experienced in the jerusalem wars, he repulsed the royal line bravely and fearfully', only to be overcome by sheer numbers. At the battle of the Standard in 1138, the forces of David, king of Scotland, were in danger of rout when cavalry led by his son, Henry, charged against the English line: ' But his mounted knights could by no means continue against knights in armour who fought on foot, close together in an immovable formation. ' 4 The discipline and order demonstrated on these occasions was unusual, because medieval European armies were usually fragile and incoherent. Because they were too expensive to maintain, there were no standing forces except the small numbers of royal and occasionally noble bodyguards. Armies were normally made up of the retinues of the aristocratic elite, consisting of horse and foot (milites et pedites) that had to be reorganized if they were to fight as a unit; and they were dispersed as quickly as possible to save money.5 When professional soldiers became common, they were recruited individually. Everybody knew what he needed to do, but acquiring the discipline and skills needed for close-order fighting was difficult for composite armies with short lives. One may not claim that the style of war was unchanging: Europeans I J. Haldon, Warfare, State, and Society in the Byzantine World, s65-1204 (London, 1999}, esp. pp. 67106. 2 B. W. Scholz and B. Rogers, The Royal Frankish Annals in Carolingian Chronicles (Ann Arbor, 1972), p. 6o, version of the Reviser. 3 Andrew of Hungary, 'Descriptio Victoriae a Karolo Reportatae', in Monumenta Germaniae H istorica, Scriptores, ed. G. Waitz (Hanover, 1882), xxvi. 575·7· 4 Henry of Huntingdon, HistoriaAnglorum (Oxford, 1996), pp. 454-5, 718-19. 5 See]. France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000-l JOO (London, 1999}, pp. 1-15.

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fought in many ways. But the demands of the close-quarter battle imposed themselves on every army, even if each met the demands in a different way. Western Europe began to rely on heavy cavalry from the early tenth century, whereas in areas like Poland and Rus that faced the steppe lands, light cavalry would remain the norm for centuries. In the tenth century, Louis IV's invasion of Lorraine failed in the face of guerrilla warfare; and much the same happened to Philip IV's army in Flanders in the late thirteenth century. In the early fourteenth century, armies became larger and developed more effective and numerous infantry, especially archers, and novel tactics. Nonetheless, despite the blandishments of Andrew Ayton, Michael Prestwich, and Clifford Rogers, there was never a medieval military revolution. 1 Nothing resembling a 'Military Revolution' occurred before the late nineteenth century. Most change was the result of more efficient administration: the close-quarter battle fought in close-order formation remained untouched. Anglo-Welsh archery was no more effective during the Hundred Years War than disciplined, dismounted menat-arms. The dominant style was the combination of slow-moving heavy cavalry with massed infantry, and the aim was destruction and ravaging. Sieges were frequent and battles were rare: when forced to fight, the object was to get to close quarters after relatively little manoeuvre. A slowmoving, indeed ponderous, style of war was neither particularly flexible nor particularly effective. When we consider the warfare of the Europeans' neighbours, the limitations of the European style are obvious. In 1241, the Mongols were at the extreme end of their range, but at Leignitz in Poland and Mohi in Hungary they destroyed Western armies, though at a terrible cost in casualties. The Asian steppe produced vast numbers of light horses and forced its inhabitants into a nomadic style of life that made them the Middle Ages' greatest warriors. Their most effective weapon was the composite bow, which was short enough to use in the saddle yet which had enough power to prepare the way for close-quarter battle. 2 This style of war was circumscribed in important ways: light horsemen needed grasslands on which to feed their mounts and open spaces in which to manoeuvre, because evasion and ambush were characteristic of the style; their recursive bows were useless in wet weather that dissolved the glue, and accuracy varied A. Ayton and J L. Price, 'T he Military Revolution from a Medieval Perspective', in The Med£eval M£l£tary• Revoluh:on, ed. A. Ayton and ]. L. Price (London, 1998 ), pp. 1-22; M. Prestwich, 'Was There a Military Revolution in Medieval England?', in Recogn£t£ons: Essays Presented to Edmund Frylk, ed. 1

C. Richmond and L Harvey (Aberystwyth, 1995), pp. 19-39; C. Rogers, 'The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years' War', Journal of M£l£tary H1:story, !vii (1993), 241-78; repr. with revisions in The M£l£tary Revolution Debate, ed. C. J Rogers (Boulder, 1995), pp. 55-942 C. R. Bowlus, 'T actical and Strategic Weaknesses of Horse Archers on the Eve of the First Crusade', in Autour lk la Premiere Croisalk, ed. M. Balard (Paris, 1996), pp . 159-66.

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sos from man to man; but most obviously, such mounted armies lack the capacity to besiege: they took cities and fortresses by storm (which was hazardous), surprise, or long-term attrition, dominating their hinterland and allowing isolation to undermine the will to resist. Although the Mongols solved their technical problems by enlisting subordinate peoples into specialist branches of the military, their more intractable problem was political. The ambitions of some of the elites of the Mongol and Turkic tribes were frustrated because other groups evaded subordination by moving around the vastness of Central Asia or by entering the settled areas on its fringes, as the Turks did in the Middle East. But on a worldwide scale, light horse were unquestionably the dominant style of warfare in the late Roman period and throughout the Middle Ages. The Central Asian peoples offered intermittent and sometimes overwhelming threats to the centres of civilization at the opposite ends of their range, the Mediterranean and the Chinese.• Equally remarkable were the Turks, who ruled the Middle East from the eleventh to the twentieth century. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they formed an elite, despite never being numerous, whose movement into the Islamic world brought with it other peoples such as the Kurds (Saladin among them) and the Circassians. The Turks usually employed the same tactics as the Mongols, using fast-moving mounted bowmen to break up enemy formations in preparation for the close-quarter fighting. But their tactics were flexible. By 1187, Saladin deployed large numbers of h eavily equipped ghulams able to face Western knights at close quarters. The Mameluke rulers of Egypt expelled the crusaders from the Middle East at the same time as they repelled the Mongol incursion into Syria at Ainjalut in 1260 (though they failed to prevent the establishment of the Ilkhanid state in Persia). They triumphed over two very different enemies, for the Mongols employed a similar style of war to the Mamelukes', to whom they were closely related. This style had acclimatized well to the Middle East where, even before the Turkish invasion of the eleventh century, similar tactics were common. 2 The Mamelukes renewed themselves generation after generation by importing Turks from the steppe whose natural skills were harnessed by discipline and channelled into the Mameluke war-machine. The decisive I See D. Morgan, The Mongols (Oxford, 1986) and T. Allsen, Mongol Imperialism (Berkeley, 1987}, and for the military, D. Sinor, 'The Inner Asian Warriors',Journal of the American Oriental Society, ci (1981 }, 133·44· See also, P. Jackson, 'The Dissolution of the Mongol Empire', Central Asiatic Journal, xxii (1978), 3-4· 2 On the Mongol clash with the Mamelukes, see J. M. Smith, 'Mongol Society and the Military in the Middle East: Anteced ents and Adaptations' , in War and Society in the Eastern Mediterranean, Seventh to Fifteenth Centuries, ed. Y. Lev (Leiden, 1997}, pp. 249-66.

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change was the Mamelukes' establishment after the mid-thirteenth century of a standing army of well-equipped cavalry supported by specialist branches, paid for by the ruthless exploitations of the wealth of Egypt and Syria. Having become a sea power, they defeated the Christian kingdom of Cyprus in 1425. It is conventional to argue that the Ottomans overpowered the Mamelukes at Marj Dabik near Aleppo in August 1516 because they had firearms and the Mamelukes did not; indeed, this is probably why historians have somewhat neglected the Mamelukes. But they had had great success and, at the last, though too late, made a determined effort to employ the new weapons. To attribute their subordination to the empire of Constantinople to cultural rigidity is to oversimplify. 1 They were defeated by another Turkic people whose military culture proved even more flexible and effective.

***** The Ottoman Turks were a steppe people who, in the fourteenth century, found themselves, through the determination of the house of Osman and a series of accidents, the dominant force in what is now the Balkans. Faced with different military traditions in a new countryside, they adapted skilfully partly because the house of Osman, determined to transcend the limitations of their inheritance as nomadic warlords, embarked on an ambitious programme of state building by reforming the army. When Tamerlane defeated and killed Sultan Bayezid in 1402, the Ottoman civil and military elite held the empire together. Traditionally, Turks were light cavalry, which remained an important element in the Ottoman army. However, the janizaries were excellent infantry and the sipahis a heavy cavalry able to face the most formidable enemies at close quarters. Their exploitation of conquered peoples without overtaxation enabled them to mobilize resources on a scale unavailable to Western powers. 2 The Ottomans proved both flexible and innovative. They learned tactics from their enemies, introducing the wagon-laager of the Taborites (which Western armies had had difficulty in overpowering) and adapting gunFor the early development, see R. Irwin, The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate, 1250-1382 (London, 1986), esp. pp. 1-25; R. Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Hkhanid War, 1260-81 (Cambridge, 1995), is particularly interesting on the conflict with the Mongols, on which see pp. 26-48; D. Ayalon, Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom: A Challenge to a Medieval Society (London, 1978), pp. 110-11, thinks that firearms of the Ottomans were decisive in the war against the Mamelukes, but recognizes the formidable nature of the Mameluke warmachine. 2 D. E. Pitcher, An Historical Geography of the Ottoman Empire (Leiden, 1972), pp. 41-71; H. lnalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The ClASsical Age, 1300-16oo, trans. N. Itzkowitz and M. Imber (London, 1973), pp. 55-120;]. McCarthy, The Ottoman Turks (London, 1997), PP·94·100. 1

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powder weapons with skill. In the siege of Constantinople in 1453, they used large cannons. They defeated both Western armies and the very different forces of the Safavids of Iran and the Mamelukes of Egypt. The Ottomans also adapted well to the key changes in sixteenth-century warfare: the importance of firearms and the need for more permanent armies.1 The dominant military power in the Mediterranean world from the fifteenth century until the end of the seventeenth, they drove the Spain of Philip II from North Africa. Hanson stresses the ability ofWestern capitalism to finance war, but the Ottomans were more successful than any European power of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Philip, not the Sublime Porte, went bankrupt at least three times. 2 The Turks' tactics capitalized upon their native skills of riding and hunting. Almost all armies were compelled to adapt to the availability of native skills in the populations from which they recruited, but the Turks' skills derived from the flexibility, co-operation, and discipline essential to the care of domestic animals and the hunt for wild ones on the steppe. Their ferocity won them their control of the eastern Mediterranean and they channelled resources into their militarized governments. By comparison, European development was limited because the western end of the Mediterranean was relatively poor, and its monarchies, the characteristic political structure, were unable fully to exploit their subjects' wealth. They were constrained by institutions representing the interests of elites. Exemplified by the Cortes in Aragon, they included merchant oligarchies, which were only occasionally powerful owing to the bitter resentment they aroused among nobles. The use of gunpowder made strikingly little difference to warfare in the West in the late medieval and early modern period, though its impact was greater than elsewhere.3 For a moment, at the end of the fifteenth century, the new artillery of the French seemed destined to sweep away the dominance of fortifications, only to be countered by improvisations like the boulevards which served Orleans so well against the English in 1429, 1 R.

Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700 (London, 1999), esp. pp . 105-32; H. Kaminsky, A H istory of the Hussite Revolution (Berkeley, 1967), pp . 366-83; F. G. Heymann, J ohn Zizka and the Hussite Revolution (New York, 1955), pp. 286-305; a useful collection of sources for the Hussite Wars is provided by T. A. Fudge, 'I7u Crusade against the Hussites in Bohemia, 1418-37 (Aldershot, 2002), pp . 45340. 2 Hanson, Carnage and Culture, pp. 269-73; G. Parker, The Grand Strateg;y of Philip II (New Haven, 1998), pp. 87-8, following F. A. Castillo, 'Dette flottante et d ette consolidee en Espagne, 1557-16oo', Annales: Economies, Societies, Civilisations X VIII (1963). I acknowledge the help here of Sheila Randall. 3 Hall, Weapons and Warfare, pp. 210-16, traces the slow development of gunpowder technology in Europe, summarizing his views. H ere I follow K. Chase, Hrearms: A Global History• (Cambridge, 2003), who sees the adoption of firearms in various parts of the world as related to particular circumstances. For a summary of his ideas, see pp. 197-9.

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and, after about 1525, by the trace italienne, star-shaped fortifications that relied upon deep ditches and low, rather than high, walls, and designed to enable heavy cannon to keep an attacker at bay. Gunpowder weapons were clumsy and slow-firing. As a result, the pike remained effective until the invention of the ring-and-socket bayonet at the end of the seventeenth century, which effectively turned the musket into a pike. As late as 1745, charging Scottish clansmen, armed mainly with swords, overpowered raw infantry armed with muskets. 1 If knights in armour died out from the midsixteenth century, cavalry, exemplified in Oliver Cromwell's 'Ironsides' in the English Civil War, reinvented itself as the potentially decisive battlefield weapon by exploiting the imperfections of the musket. In the early modern period, states became richer and could raise larger armies. Medieval armies had relied on the traditional skills of men like archers from Cheshire, which could be taught to everyone only with difficulty. By contrast, men could be trained quickly to use the musket, which was a more standardized weapon even than the crossbow. Nonetheless, the industrialization of weapons and training did not supplant the need for close order because battles were still won at close quarter; the musket with bayonet was, after all, a form of pike. Eighteenth-century warfare in western Europe resembled medieval warfare: often campaigns had no obvious result and fortifications remained supreme. Antoine-Henrijomini, in 1811, echoed V egetius almost to the very words when he advised an army to 'give battle only when great advantages are to be derived, or the position of the army makes it necessary.' 2

***** Europe's early modern military revolution occurred at sea. In the thirteenth century, the economies of northern and southern Europe became more closely integrated , once the Christian conquest of Spain enabled traffic to p ass easily through the straits of Gibraltar. As a result, the northern and Mediterranean traditions of shipbuilding combined to produce the big-gun ship of the early sixteenth century. This striking phenomenon, and the creation of a New World, has attracted enormous attention. 3 But 1 J. Black, European Warfare, I66o-1815 (London, 1994), pp. 38-41;]. Prebble, Culloden (Harmondsworth, 1967), pp. So-ng. 2 A. H. J omini, Traite des g;randes operations militaires, contenant l'histoire critique des campagues de

Frederic II: comparees a celles d l'empereur Napoleon, avec un recueil des principes giniraux de l'art de laguerre (Paris, 1811-16), ii. 323, quoted by Lynn, Battle, p. 181. 3 P. Chaunu, L 'expansion Europeene du XIII au XV siecle (Paris, 1969) is important for its exploration

of the later medieval period, and in particular for the conception of the 'Mediterranean Atlantic', pp. 67, 88-102, the idea that Atlantic exploration was conceived as a result of the connection between the Mediterranean and North European trading areas; G. Hutchinson, Medieval Ships and Shipping

I 512 the West's success at sea only highlights the limited developments on land. The powerful fleets of the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French established footholds throughout the East: they generated enormous mercantile wealth and, especially in England and the Netherlands, brought merchants into the 'converse of war'. The mercantile competitiveness of the European powers helped to sustain the expansionism. By contrast, China faced no threats to its existence except from the steppe where gunpowder weapons proved oflittle use. After the establishment of the Manchu, a steppe dynasty, in 1644, brought peace to the Inner Asian frontier, China lapsed into a defensive stance. Throughout Asia, European penetration was limited, and such Western defeats as the Portuguese and Spanish failure in North Africa are too easily overlooked. 1 Even the British conquest of India was slow: some of the Indian states, like Mysore, had evolved effective tactics and disciplined armies, showing themselves, where necessary, adept at learning from the Europeans. The ultimate British success owed much to exploitation of political divisions among the Indian states rather than to their military ineptitude. TheWest's success is easily exaggerated owing to the absorption of the Americas and Russia's expansion across Siberia, triumphs, after all, over militarily primitive societies, many of them deeply fissured at the time of the European contact. 2 The clumsy and slow-moving style of close-order war practised in the West found firearms useful. In a continent where fast-moving styles were impractical and siege was a major preoccupation, soldiers concentrated on making the best use of the new weapons, which proved remarkably effective when drill and discipline were structured around the delivery of volley-fire co-ordinated with artillery in preparation for the close-quarter fight. 3 By the early nineteenth century, the European style of war had become more effective than that of other peoples who found it difficult to adapt to it quickly. However, there was no overwhelming cultural bar to their adopting and adapting British methods: in 1857, the mutineers showed that Asian troops could apply European discipline and drill with

(London, 1994), pp. 146-63; G. V. Scammell, The World Encompassed: The First European Maritime Empires, c.Boo-1650 (London, 1981), pp. 259-74; C. R. Boxer, The Portur;uese Seaborne Empire, Ll151&i5 (Harmondsworth, 1973); and]. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance (London, 1963) are classic works on the origins of European expansion. 1 A. C. Hess, The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century !hero-African Frontier (Chicago, 1978), pp. 187-212. 2 For the early stages of the Russian expansion, see]. Martin, Medieval Russia, gBo-1584 (Cambridge, 1995); for later, see]. P. LeDonne, The Russian Empire and the World, qoo-1917 (New York, 1997). See also, M. Gilbert, The Routl-edge Atlos ofRussian History (London, 3rd ed. 2003). 3 Black, European Warfare, pp. 6o-6; R G. S. Cooper, The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns and the Contest for India: The Struggle for Control of the South Asian Military Economy (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 285-91, is sceptical of the notion of superior training.

I The Culture of Combat

considerable success. 1 The innovations that stimulated European military development came in the wake of the French Revolution. To set ideology to the service of war was not new. Greeks and Romans spoke of their enemies as 'barbarians', a word inherited and mutated by the Christian empire. Constantine believed that he owed victory over Maxentius, his rival for the throne of the western Roman Empire, at the Milvian Bridge in October 312 to the Christian God who had inspired his army. The Carolingians exhorted their armies to believe that they were fighting in God's cause and converted 'barbarians' to Christianity by force. 2 The call for crusade, which had stirred medieval people, retained its influence until the eighteenth century. 3 But the ideology of nationalism unleashed by the French Revolution had not only a wide and powerful appeal magnified by new methods of communication and propaganda, and a growing degree of literacy, but also far-reaching consequences for the conduct of war. The French created a new officer class that responded flexibly to technical change and inspired their troops by ideas that impelled them into the horrors of battle with a new fervour. Karl von Clausewitz, who understood that decisive battle was often an illusion, saw Napoleon's remarkable victories at Austerlitz in December 1805 and Jena-Auerstadt in October 1806 as triumphs for the spirit of free citizen soldiers. This new enthusiasm, he suggested, pointed the way to the future of warfare, in which a state would aim at destroying the enemy's forces in a gigantic, and decisive, battle. Although not immune from contemporary romanticism, as Lynn shows, Clausewitz's work recognizes the reality rather than the illusion ofbattle. 4 Clausewitz perceived that mass participation in the 'converse of war' threatened the traditional elites. Hitherto the masses had only occasionally played a role; the populations of the Flemish cities in the fourteenth century or Cromwell in the 1640s arousing the enthusiasm of his New Model Army. 5 To a degree, the military elites of the nineteenth century harnessed the enthusiasm of the masses through the ideology of the nation. I B. Watson, The Great Indian Mutiny (New York, 1991), pp. 115-24. 2 C. Erdmann, The Orr:gin of the Idea of the Crusade, trans. of a 1935 German original by M. W. Baldwin and W . Goffart (Princeton, 1977), pp. 35-9, remains a classic work; for a more modern survey, see J. Flori, Laguerre sainte: La formation de l'Idee de croisade dans l'Ocddent chretien (Paris, 2001);].

France, ' Holy War and Holy Men: Erdmann and the Lives of the Saints', in The Experr:ence of Crusading, ed. M. Bull, N. Housley et a!., 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2003), i. 197. 3 For the long-lasting influence of the crusades, see N. Housley, The Later Crusades (Oxford, 1992). 4 Lynn, Battle, pp. 179-218. Others see him as the heir to the Enlightenment, notably M. Howard, Clausewitz (Oxford, 1983), pp. 12-14. See also, H. Strachan, 'Ciausewitz, Carl von. Prussian Soldier and Military Theorist', in Reader's Guide to Military History, ed. C. Messenger (London, 2001), p. 110. 5 J. F. Verbruggen, The Battle ofthe Golden Spurs, trans. of a Dutch original of 1952 by D. R. Ferguson, ed. K. Devries (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 244-9;]. Gillingham, Cromwell: Portrait ofa Soldier (London, 1976), pp. 92-108.

I

The revolution of 1848 was channelled into the service of the Prussian monarchy; in 1914, Europe went to war with a glad heart to the sound of marching bands. Although the horrors and the failures of the First World War called into question both the authority of the elites (and especially the military elites) and the 'consent of the masses', the adoption of the new ideologies of Fascism and Communism (which spawned new elites) culminated in the horrors of the eastern front in the Second World War when huge armies suffered enormous losses in the name of appalling beliefs. Those who fought hardest were inspired by illiberal ideas - the Soviets, the Germans, and the Japanese - while US and British troops were both less willing to take risks and highly inflexible in their tactics. The British clung to a crude style of infantry attack -with two companies thrown forward and the third held in reserve - to the astonishment and derision of the Germans who attacked in small, mutually supporting highfirepower groups. The Americans were quicker to recognize the utility of mechanized warfare. 1 Technology gave the mass armies of the twentieth century their destructive power, and technology created the 'Military Revolution'. Europe's maritime supremacy was, in itself, an encouragement to such developments as accurate clocks, good optics, and map projections. And the subjugation of the New World and the establishment of new patterns of trade and finance centred on Europe created undreamed-of wealth for Western monarchies that could not tap the wealth of their subjects to the extent that the Ottomans had, owing to the resistance to state encroachment by privileged groups: even 'absolute' monarchs, such as Louis XIV of France, recognized limits to their capacity to tax their subjects. The result of the new wealth was an 'investment mentality' that facilitated the development of new technologies required for, and spawned by, industrialization. In the eighteenth century, the most advanced parts of China were, at the very least, on a par with the most advanced parts of Europe: the technology of porcelain was peculiar to China whose silk industry was also very profitable. In China and India, trading companies were as enterprising as their European counterparts. But the acquisition of overseas territories, especially the Americas, provided some European countries with the resources to sustain growth, and the finding of coalfields conveniently adjacent to the sea in England had the same effect. In a military sense, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century China had almost no enemies after the pacification of the steppe peoples. Unlike the Europeans, the Han people had no obvious rivals against whom to compete and wage war. The Ottomans dominated an ancient landscape whose resources, mineral and 1 M. Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-5 (London, 2004), esp. pp. 85-100.

I 'flu Culture of Combat

agricultural, had been depleted over the centuries of civilization, and they were cut off from new wealth by Europe to the west and the European empires to the east. By the mid-eighteenth century, their intellectuals were sounding alarm bells about European progress. 1 Industrialization transformed war less immediately than one might think. Railways, where they existed, could move troops and supplies; tinned food was easily stored, handled, and transported, and provided greater variety of diet for soldiers; guns became lighter and more accurate; iron ships were stronger and could be built to greater tonnages with more carrying power; and the telegraph enabled governments to exert a degree of control over distant subordinates. All these were in use in the American Civil War, yet in many ways it remained an eighteenth-century confrontation: Pickett's charge, which marked the culmination of the battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, was a bayonet charge into the heart of the Northern army. The limitations of volley-fire and raw troops prescribed close-quarter battle against a stubborn enemy. 2 But the decisive change came with the second phase of industrialization in the late nineteenth century, which finally precipitated the 'Military Revolution'. A range of new industries, notably in chemicals, machine tools, and electronics, facilitated the creation of weapons of mass destruction. 3 The magazine rifle, the machine-gun, and the recoilless cannon changed war fundamentally, making the close-quarter battle obsolete, even though infantry still fought at close quarters, ifless often and on a lesser scale than previously. In their place, missile weapons dominated war. In the First World War, shrapnel and high explosive, not bullets or edged weapons, were the chief killers. In 1916, General Philippe Petain, the defender of Verdun, remarked that 'artillery now conquers a position and the infantry occupies it.'4 The generals of the day, who have been reproached for stupidity, understood the effect of the new technology: Sir Douglas Haig argued for the adoption of machine-guns, while the much maligned Schlieffen Plan was designed to minimize the massive losses that it recognized full-frontal collision of armies would entail. 5 But in all the general staffs on the eve of the First World War, officers wondered whether conscripts would fight. The close-order, close-quarter battle had been difficult enough to control. The pikes carried by British K. Pomeranz, '!he Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 20oo), pp. 68, 241, 283; McCarthy, Ottoman Turks, pp. 287-91, discusses Ottoman reform. 2 E. Hagerman, '!he American Civil War and the On:gins ofModern Waifare: Ideas, Organizat£on, and Field Command (Bloomington, 1988), p. 95· 3 S. Pollard, Peaceful Conquest: '!he Industrialization ofEurope, 1660-1970 (Oxford, 1981), pp. 252-76. 4 Quoted inJ. T erraine, '!he White Heat: '!he New Warfare, 1914-18(London, 1982), p. 207. 5 T. M. Holmes, 'Schlieffen and the Avoidance of Tactics: A Re-investigation', Journal of S trategic Studies, xxvii (2004), 663-84.

1

I

non-commissioned officers at the battle of Waterloo in 1815 were not merely decorative symbols of their authority: in battle, they were locked together horizontally behind the ranks of infantry to hold the soldiers in place. Similarly, every army deployed cavalry behind its infantry to force the troops to stand in the line of fire. The logic of the new firepower of the twentieth century was open-order, small-unit deployment, a style pregnant with risk, which explains why, in 1914, both France and Germany clung to the mass attack. The British, with a professional army experienced in the Boer War, knew all about the empty battlefield and began the war with open order: when they advanced, one German officer observed, 'a shell, however well aimed, seldom killed more than one man. ' 1 But when the British expanded their forces with volunteers and conscripts, they too resorted to linear tactics as an instrument of control, notoriously so at the Somme in 1916 when the British army suffered 6o,ooo casualties in a single day. The new weaponry demanded a form of tactics, open order, which went contrary to millennia of military doctrine and habit, and was unwelcome to the high commands of the First World War who were drawn overwhelmingly from traditional elites who regarded the masses with great distrust, particularly after the emergence of Marxism. In all the armies on the western front, new infantry tactics designed to cope with the firestorm of battle emerged only slowly as officers became aware of the trust they could place in the rank and file. This was one of the factors that explains the sense of distance felt in the First World War between the fighting troops and their commanders. One consequence of this was that it later became easy to portray the generals as fools who could be made to bear the responsibility for every catastrophe.2 Another was that, during the Second World War, British as well as American commanders took pains to appear egalitarian to help their governments to maintain consent.

***** Europeans have adopted many styles of warfare across the centuries. But like all other peoples, they had to prepare for the close-quarter battle and adopted close-order deployment as a means of maximizing success. They showed no greater enthusiasm than anyone else for battle as a means of winning a war, and at times showed markedly less. What distinguished the 1 Terraine, White Heat, p. 94· 2 The title ofP. A. Thompson, Lions Led by Donkeys (London, 1927), is said to have been inspired by a statement by a German general that the British infantry were 'lions led by donkeys'. This view remains popular in the United Kingdom, amplified by A. Clark's popular account of the First World War generals, 'The Donkeys (London, 1961). The quotation is actually apocryphal, as shown by J. T erraine, 'The Smoke and the Fire: Myths and Anti-Myths of War, 1861-1945 (London, 1980), pp. 170-81.

I The Culture of Combat Europeans was the clumsy and slow style of war that Europe's climate, agriculture, topography, and multiplication of fortifications imposed. Theirs was not an especially adaptive military culture, nor an especially successful one. Within their core sphere of operation - the Mediterranean world - their armies were sometimes left behind, by the Mamelukes and later the Ottomans. But their commanders had no option but to persist with their style of war, which was not unduly penalized by the need to carry firearms. Their attraction lay in overcoming the bottleneck of 'native skills'; men, however limited their experience, could be trained by battledrill built around them. Volley-fire combined with the socket bayonet provided an effective fighting style for European armies in the last phase of the age of the close-quarter battle, from the mid-seventeenth to the midnineteenth century. Only the 'Military Revolution' of the late nineteenth century ended the tyranny of the close-order and close-quarter battle, and opened the way for a new style of warfare in the twentieth century that could only be sustained by ideological ruthlessness. There is no doubt that Western technological warfare is now dominant. But the dominance is recent and may not last, partly because it rests on an economic pre-eminence that seems to be passing. It was made possible by the ideology of the nation state, but this, too, is being eroded, to be replaced by an infinity of allegiances, private and international, that place in doubt theW est's ability to make war in its bid to dominate the globe.

II

Property, Warfare, and the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century•

'Grammar forges the Sword of the Word, dialectic sharpens it: theology uses it. ' 2 This must have seemed quite a natural analogy to Robert of Sorbon (1201-74), an intellectual of the thirteenth century who lived in a world in which war was a frequent event and its practitioners the masters of society. But we tend to see the intellectual life as something quite separate from warfare. The revival of learning which we call the 'Renaissance of the Twelfth Century', had a profound influence on almost all fields of human endeavour in the period 1000-1300, but it is not generally considered to have influenced warfare. As long as historians saw war as an affair of instinct in which thought had little part to play, this posed few problems. However, now that historians recognize that men applied some degree of organization, system and intelligence to the business of war, it is quite natural to ask what influence this rebirth of learning had upon war and to what extent.3 To do this we need to understand the general factors which governed European warfare across the period 1000-1300. The state of technology meant that men had to fight at close quarters and this had an obvious far-reaching influence I This is a version of the paper which the author gave at the Annual Conference of the Haskins Society at Houston in November 1997. The author would like to express his gratitude to the President, Professor B.S. Bachrach, and members of the Society for this kind invitation, and to thank those who participated in much discussion which clarified and sharpened his ideas. 2 Robert of Sorbon quoted in C.H. Haskins, 'The University of Paris in the Sermons of the Thirteenth Century', AHR 10 (1904/5), 9, used with this reference by H. Waddell, The Wandering Scholars (Harmondsworth, 1954), 127. 3 C .H. Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA, 1928): something of a turning-point, at least as far as English-language writing was concerned, was marked by the publication of an article by J. Beeler, 'Towards a Reevaluation of Medieval English Generalship', Journal of British Studies 3 (1963), 1- 11, though the process might have been speeded up if J.F. Verbruggen, Art of Warfare in Western Europe during the Middle Ages (Amsterdam, 1977), originally published in Dutch in 1954, had found a translator earlier. A major contribution to our understanding of generalship has been made by J. Gillingham, ' Richard I and the Science of War in the Middle Ages', in War and Government in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Gillingham and J.C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1984), 78- 91, and 'William the Bastard at War' , in Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen-Brown, ed . C. Harper-Bill, J. Holdsworth, and J. Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989), 41-58.

II 74 on tactics. The geography and climate of the West was very influential in governing the make-up and methods of armies. Mobility was important, hence, in part, the dominance of the knight, but Europe was not an area of open plains through which light cavalry could swirl, and infantry could thrive around the obstacles which its countryside everywhere provides. At the level of tactics, everybody in the middle ages knew, and all military history testifies, that in the absence of effective and rapid-firing long-range missile weapons, close formation, whether of infantry or cavalry, is essential to victory because in such formations one man can support another. There was widespread and indeed instinctive appreciation of the need to destroy the enemy's resources. These were the essentials of war, but within these parameters there was room for discussion, debate, and systematization and recording, the hallmarks of the new thinking. There is something almost random and formless about the development of medieval war. The tactical combination of archer and armoured foot which cut down the French at Bourgtheroulde in 1124 was a common one, but it rarely achieved such success. ln 1314 Robert Bruce triumphed with pretty well the same tactics which Edward I had defeated at Falkirk seventeen years before. It is much easier to see pattern in the institutional history of the Church, the growth of government or the development of learning, than in the apparently adventitious history of war. Why was this, and did the intellectual ferment of the 'Twelfth Century Renaissance' really have no influence on the art of war, and if not, why not? One of the key factors which governed war in the period 1000-1300 was the fact that it was waged by landowners. This is not to say that all decisions about peace and war were made solely as a result of proprietorial considerations; simply that all serious decisions took them into account to one degree or another. The influence of the proprietorial concerns of the European ruling class, impacting upon the geographical, climatic, and technical factors already mentioned, shaped military institutions and the conduct of war, and even had its influence upon the development of technology. We think of war as a function of sovereignty, and it used to be popular to speak of private war as opposed to that of monarchs. This is a distinction which royal lawyers were later at pains to make real as part of that exaltation of sovereignty which is so notable a part of the intellectual revival of the twelfth century. The revival of Roman Law made a vital contribution in this respect. But land ownership conferred many of the qualities of sovereignty and sovereigns acted like landowners because that is what they were. The church always maintained a high view of sovereign authority, but Gregory VII virtually equated kings with other ruling persons who lacked this title whom he calls 'princes'. So far had the distinction between kings and others slipped by the end of the eleventh century that one modern authority has suggested that 'the age of kings seemed to have passed and that of princes to be the future'. John of Salisbury produced a most pragmatic analysis of the Christian polity - the prince is the head of the commonwealth, but the power of the great is recognized in his notion that reciprocity between all aspects of the body politic was vital to its continued existence. This

II Property, Warfare, and the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century

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took account of the fact that property was for most people much more real - it was what people lived on, while sovereignty was a mere concept, albeit an exalted one. Landowning granted de facto authority and the sovereign was only as powerful as his landowning allowed him to be. 4 Contemporaries had the highest notions of the rights of property. He lias of Maine took oath to go on the First Crusade, but when his lands were threatened by William Rufus he changed his mind and justified himself saying: 'I must wage a war nearer to home against enemies of Christ. Everyone who resists truth and justice shows himself to be an enemy of God ... I will imprint the image of the Holy Cross on my saddle and bridle ... I will proceed against the enemies of peace and right.' In this view the crusade is about truth, justice, peace, and right and these are identified with Helias's property rights. This is no less than a crusade for rightful property which is here effectively declared sacred. This reverence shaped their view of sovereignty. In the early tenth century Henry I was elected king of Germany, but a Bavarian writer denied his claim to interfere in the duchy 'for neither he nor his family ever owned a foot of land here'. Towards the end of the twelfth century Guy, king of Jerusalem, was appalled when Raynald of Chatillon, lord of Kerak and Shawbak in (what is now) Jordan broke a truce with Saladin by seizing a caravan; when ordered by him to make restoration Raynald: 'replied that he would not do so, for he was lord of his land, just as Guy was lord of his'. Even monarchy itself, the very embodiment of sovereignty, was envisaged in terms of real property. After the death of Richard in 1199 Hubert Walter asked William Marshal whether John or Arthur should succeed and he replied: 'In all conscience, he [John] is the nearest heir to the land of his father and brother.' 'Is that really your desire, Marshal?' 'Yes, my lord, for it is right: the son is nearer to the land of his father than the nephew.' 5

It was as landowners, through landed predominance, that kings could develop their sense of sovereignty - precisely by holding many feet of land. Once their dominance enabled them to collect taxes they could enjoy resources to which other kinds of landowners could hardly aspire, but to the very end of this period almost all kings relied on their demesne for income and proceeded to tax only with great caution. For all their pretensions, kings and emperors were little more than great landowners who shared all the preoccupations of their most important subjects. Henry II of England ruled over what is often described as the 'Angevin 4 K.F. Werner, 'Kingdom and Principality in Twelfth-Century France ', in The Medieval Nobility, ed. T. Reuter (Amsterdam, 1978), 243-4: J. Flori, L 'ideologie du glaive: prehistoire de La chevalerie (Geneva, 1983), 168: John of Salisbury, Policraticus, ed. C.J. Nederman (Cambridge, 1990), book 5, chapter 2, 67. 5 OV v, 228-32; 'The Old French Continuation of William of Tyre', in Th e Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade, ed. P.W. Edbury (Aidershot, 1996), 29; T. Reuter, Germany in the Early Middle Ages, 800- /056 (London, 1991), 139-41; P. Meyer, Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, 3 vols. (Paris, 1891-4) ii , 64, lines 11897-903. I owe thi s reference to my colleague, T.W. Rowlands, whose translation is used here.

II 76 Empire', and controversy has raged as to whether he is rex bellicosus or the exponent par excellence of 'the arts of peaceful government' .6 In reality he is best understood as the worried proprietor of miscellaneous lands, hurrying about them shoring up a position here and pursuing claims there by whatever means came to hand, a landowner who happened to be a king rather than a shining light of sovereignty. The fact that wealth was landed produced the characteristic institutions of medieval warfare - the castle and the knight, and determined much of the pattern of war. Landed estates were scattered - the result of the accidents of birth, death, marriage, and gifts received and disbursed, often in the interests of winning friends and influence. Proprietors lived on the proceeds of those lands largely renders in kind which were difficult to transport, so they needed places to store their incomes which were comfortable enough to live in for the time required to eat them up. But this was a dangerous and insecure time, for government was not well articulated. So the house had to be fortified- even in a land as closely governed as England where fortified dwellings long predate the Norman Conquest. The castle existed not so much to defend the land and its population as to guard the proprietor's right to extort his income and to prevent anybody else doing the same. The potential to wage war was a necessity for any property-owner. In an age of poor communications and weak governmental structures the man with landed property had to be able to protect his resources and to wield influence with others of his kind. Brute force lurked just below the surface of medieval society. We have become mesmerized by the order imposed by the Angevins, but this was enjoyed only in limited parts of their dominions and even in England the Northern and Welsh Marches were wild areas of feud which spilled over into middle England at the slightest sign of royal weakness. And order was only ever skin-deep. Matthew Paris recalls a dispute in 1248 between the monks of Selby and the royal tax-collectors in which a monk was killed and many injured; in the same year at Canterbury another monk was killed in a dispute within the community and in Norfolk the knight, Godfrey de Millers, was castrated as he crept into the bed of another's daughter. In 1249 a conspiracy of robbers was exposed and members of the royal household implicated. While the scale of disorder varied enormously from time to time and from place to place, the fact is that war was a vital function of landowning. In the absence of courts and firm jurisdiction war was often the only way to settle quarrels if agreement and arbitration failed. Even where, as in England, there was a judicial system, its operation could be uncertain and at the fringes violence was condoned. War across the period was in essence proprietorial warfare: 6 J.O. Prestwich, 'Richard Coeur de Lion: Rex Bellicosus' , in Richard Coeur de Lion in History and Myth, ed. J. Nelson (London, 1992), 1-16; J. Gillingham, 'Conquering Kings: Some Twelfth-Century Reflections on Henry II and Richard I', in Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages: Essays presented to Karl Leyser, ed. T. Reuter (London, 1992), 163-78, reprinted in J. Gillingham, Richard Coeur de Lion: Kingship, Chivalry and War in the Twelfth Century (London, 1994), 105- 18.

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it was an aspect of landowning, and because landowning necessarily involved authority over men and women proprietorial right was not clearly distinguished from sovereignty.? The dominance of landed wealth meant that knights had to be paid by being established on the land, or by being paid in rations and support by those who had land. Broadly, knights were either endowed with land in return for service, in which case they had to be allowed much time to look after their lands, or they were paid men to be got rid of as soon as the opportunity arose. Even the richest could not envisage supporting whole armies on a regular basis. So throughout the period 1000-1300 armies were ad hoc bodies, dissolved as soon as possible. In 1184 Baldwin of Hainaut dismissed his forces as soon as a truce was arranged with the count of Flanders, and his Chancellor is quite clear that this was a great financial relief. In November 1237 Frederick II lured the Milanese away from their camp on the Rossignolo which protected Brescia, by pretending to dismiss his army; this was precisely what they had expected him to do at this time of the year, but he fell upon them in ambush at Cortenova. Six years later he was unable to suppress a rising at Viterbo which came after he had dismissed his army.s Kings, therefore, had to depend on others if they wanted to raise armies greater than those available from their own lands: across the period the basic unit of armies were the military followings of the great. This meant that kings were locked into a small society of the powerful who conceived of themselves as sharing their authority rather than acting as its delegates. Royal power certainly depended on resources and machinery of government, but it depended equally on a strong and congenial personality: King John was not, in the eyes of his chief subjects, the man his father and brother had been. A royal army is a snapshot of a particular Icing' s prestige and influence at the moment when it was raised. The intensely personal nature of relationships was the real motor of medieval politics. We are fascinated by the structure of government and the evolution of the offices of state, but the reality was of kings and others who ruled through personal knowledge and intimacy. The rarity of executions for treason amongst the political classes has been much remarked - but it was significantly more difficult to put a man to death in a context of blood and personal relationships. Moreover, the predominance of multiple homage confused allegiance and made penalties of blood difficult. John's murder of his nephew Arthur seems to have come as a genuine shock to the aristocratic world of his day.9 In the course of the twelfth century the great landowners who dominated 7 R. Vaughan, The lllustrated Chronicles of Matthew Paris: Observations of Thirteenth-Century Life (Stroud, 1993), 72-5, 92--4. 8 Gislebert of Mons, La Chronique de Ci.,lebert de Mons, ed. L. Vanderkindere (Brussels, 1904 ), 183: Piero della Vigna, Epistolarum, ed. J.R. Iselius, 2 vols. (Basle, 1740) ii, 235: Chronicon Parmense, cd. G. Bonazzi, Citta di Castello: RIS (1902), 18-20. 9 N.J.G. Pounds, 111e Medieval Castle in England and Wales: A Social and Political History (Cambridge, 1994), 146- 8; M. Powicke, The Loss of Normandy, 1189- 1204 (Manchester, 1960), 153--4.

II 78 politics and war faced challenges to their pre-eminence in the form of the rise of new elites. The clerical elite was a familiar body, but the astonishing development of the Church in the twelfth century aroused great lay hostility: at the Council of Northampton in 1164 Henry II skilfully unleashed this against Becket. The wealth of a developing society generated an educational elite which found its home in the universities of the thirteenth century. Mercantile elites emerged in the growing cities and increasingly aspired to a share of power. Above all, professional administrators, trained in the new learning, became the intimate advisers of kings and princes. 10 The response of the magnates was a new exclusivity. The term knight, originally applied to a diverse social group of retainers gathered around the great and serving them as cavalry, became a social rank annexed to the lowest rung of the aristocracy, but their numbers were sharply reduced by the demands of a new ostentation which was deliberately intended to mark aristocrats as men above the common ruck. The cavalry of late twelfth century armies continued to be organized as the followings of great men, but fewer of them were knights in the new social definition, and more and more were drawn from those of the gentry who chose a military career, or at least a military phase to their careers. By the thirteenth century the aristocracy remained military leaders, even if they were not specialized soldiers, because it enabled them to preserve political influence- and military power was an area of human activity to which they clung with special care. 11 Of course rank and competence do not always coincide and there was a growing professionalism. Richard I of England conceived of founding a professional cavalry arm of 300 men and we hear more and more often of paid mounted troops, though this varied from place to place. In the troubled Low 10 See William FitzStephen's account of the Council of Northampton in Materials for the History of Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. J.C. Roberts, 7 vols. (London, 1875-85) i, 30--39, trans . in EHD ii, 724-3 1; C.H. Haskins, The Rise of the Universities (New York, 1957), passim: A. Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978), 86-90, 12 1-4, 282-9. II On the diversity of the knights in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries see, for example, P. Van Luyn, 'Les milites dans Ia F rance du xi siecle: examen des sources narratives', Le Moyen Age 77 (1971) 5- 5 1, 193- 258; J. Flori, 'Principes et milites chez Guillaume de Poitiers: Etude semantique et ideologique', Revue Beige de Philologie et d'Histoire 64 ( 1986), 2 17- 33: B.S. Bachrach, 'The Milites and the Millennium', HSJ 6 (1994), 92: J. France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge, 1994), 31-33: Gislebert of Mons, 197 (and elsewhere) carefully distinguishes knights from other cavalry, even when the latter were as well-equipped, while Guillaume le Breton, Gesta Philippi Augusti in Oeuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, historiens de Philippe-Auguste, ed. H.F. Delaborde, 2 vols. (Paris, 1882- 5) i, 276-7 says that at Bouvines the Flemish knights disdained the mounted French sergeants sent against them. On social exclusivity see G. Duby, 'The Transformation of the Aristocracy: France at the Beginning of the Thirteenth Century', in The Chivalrous Society, trans. C. Postan (London, 1977), 175- 88; ' Les transformations sociales dans le milieu aristocratique' , in La France de Philippe Auguste, ed. R.H. Bautier (Paris, 1982), 711-1 6; J. Flori, 'Chevalerie, noblesse et lutte de classes au Moyen Age: a propos d'un ouvrage recent' , Le Moyen Age 94 ( 1988) 262- 6 sees chivalry as an aristocratic creation copied by the knights; C. Coulson, 'Cultural Realities and Reappraisals in English Castle-Study', JMH 22 (1996), 171- 207, stresses the element of fashion and ostentation in castle-building; P. Coss, The Knight in Medieval England (Stroud, I 993).

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Countries all who enjoyed any level of wealth were at pains to remain active warriors, but there were plenty of professionals ready to be recruited at times of need. Command, however, remained attached to rank. Because of the demands of war professional commanders did emerge. At Bouvines Philip Augustus placed enormous trust in the Templar bishop-elect of Senlis, Guerin, while at Worringen the effective commander of the Brabanter army was the count of Virneburg, though Duke John of Brabant remained in charge. Much credit was given to the Templar, Alard of Saint-Valery, for Charles of Anjou's victory of Tagliacozzo. By the very end of the thirteenth century Philip IV had created a stratum of professional captains who lead sizeable elements of his forces. 12 But, for the most part, such people lived in the shadow of the great and the dangers of their position, as well as their evident skills, is indicated by the bitter resentment directed against the low-born mercenaries of King John. By contrast William Marshal rose because he exemplified the qualities of the noble knight and enjoyed the very best connections. Only in Italy, where the cities established 'Captains of War' to lead their armies, could professionals aspire to a dominant role in the direction of war- and here, significantly, the professional warrior was dealing with a quite different kind of social elite.13 The dominant aristocratic elite of Northern Europe could not encourage the emergence of new elites, with their habits of dialogue, discussion, and institutionalization, in the vital sphere of war. The emergence of professional soldiers and lesser commanders made little impact on this aristocratic monopoly of the direction of war. The discontinuity of armies continued in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A richer society offered the European nobles and gentry more diverse career structures. All men who aspired to influence had to retain a military potential but some chose to be career soldiers. The military-tenurial system kept in being a body of manpower with military potential, amongst whom only a minority would choose a military career. The professionalization of war varied from place to place. In England, from the late twelfth century, there was some demilitarization of the knights, but host-obligation remained in force in principle and continued to raise sizeable numbers of knights. In the war of 11 84- 5 Baldwin V of Hainaut called upon the landed knights and they are carefully distinguished

12 Roger of Hovendon, Chronica Magistri Rogeris de Hovenden, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols., RS (London, 187 1) iv, 40; J.F. Verbruggen, The Art of Wwfare in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, trans. S. Willard and R.W. Southern (Woodbridge, 1997), 252-4, 275; P. Herde, ' Die Schlact bei Tagliacozzo. Eine historisch-topographische Studie' , Zeitschriji fur Bayerische Landesgeschichte 28 (1 962), 679- 744; 'Taktiken muslimischer Heere vom ersten Kreuzzug bis 'Ayn Djalut (1 260) und ihre Einwirkung auf de Schlact bie Tagliacozzo' , in Das Heilige Land im Mitre/alter: Begegnungsvraum zwischen Orient und Okzident, ed . W. Fischer and J. Schneider (Neustadt, 1982), 83- 94; J.R. Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair (Princeton, 1980), 372-4. 13 M. Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: the English Experience (Yale, 1996), 152- 3; D. Crouch, William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire (London, 1990); J. Gillingham, 'War and Chivalry in the History of William the Marshal' , in Richard Coeur de Lion: Kinfiship, Chivalry, and War in the Twelfth Century (London, 1994), 227- 34; D. Waley, ' Condone and Condottierri in the Thirteenth Century', PBA 61 (1975) 337-7 1.

II 80 from the paid men and adventurers who served in his armies. Historians have traditionally placed heavy emphasis upon the tenurial system as the basis of military manpower, but it had obvious drawbacks: the period of service was limited and the exigencies of chance, age, illness unforeseeable. There is plenty of evidence of heavy dependence on mercenaries across this period. In 990 the Council of Anse remarked upon them and two years later Fulk Nerra of Anjou (987-1 040) employed them at the battle of Conquereuil. Charles of Anjou relied on hired professional warriors to win himself a kingdom in thirteenth-century Italy. Recent research suggests there was little continuity amongst the contingents of important lords who led contingents in English and French armies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This was certainly the case for the contingents which William Marshal and Peter des Roches led to war. By the thirteenth century there were plenty of professional soldiers in Europe, but no professional armies. 14 The essential incoherence of armies, deep into the thirteenth century and beyond, has been somewhat obscured by historians' interest and preoccupation with English administrative development under the Normans and Angevins. The English monarchy created a great financial and administrative machine to raise and support armies, amongst other tasks, but there is little trace until the thirteenth century of a well-developed military administration per se, and without some such structures armies lacked an archive, a collective memory dedicated to specific military remembrances. The reign of Edward I in England saw considerable military development. The skilful manipulation of the Assize of Arms to provide a recruiting base for infantry armies was remarkable. Edward I was able to create large infantry forces which enabled his armies to fight across rough territory and to occupy and control his conquests in Wales and Scotland. There was tactical innovation with interesting combinations of cavalry, archers, and infantry. He employed military architects on a regular basis to build his massive Welsh fortifications and created something like a staff to prosecute war even in the far north. But what is easily overlooked is how limited this could be. Neither Edward nor any commander could dictate the kind of army which 14 Prestwich, Armies and Wmfare, 67- 75; Gislebert of Mons, 168- 89, carefully distinguishes between landed and paid knights in his account of Baldwin V's wars of 1184- 5; R.A. Brown, 'The Battle of Hastings', ANS 3 (1980), 1-21, emphasizes the cohesion of followings based on tenure from a lord; and OV iii, 255 has a celebrated passage about Gilbert. of Auffay and his companions fighting in the wars of William the Conqueror; while G. Duby, La Societe aux XI et XII siecles dans Ia rigion maconnaise (Paris, 1971), 161- 71, stresses the community of the castle; M. Prestwich, ' Money and Mercenaries in English Medieval Armies' , in England and Germany in the High Middle Ages, ed. A. Haverkamp and H. Vollrath (Oxford, 1996), 129- 50; S.D.B. Brown, 'The Mercenary and his Master: Military Service and Monetary Reward in the Eleventh and Twelfth Century', History 74 (1989), 20-38: H. Grundmann, 'Rotten und Brabanzonen', Deutsche.,· Archiv fiir die Erforschung des Mittelalters 5 (1942), 419- 92; Mansi, Concilia, 22.232-3; Richer of Rheims, Histoire de France 888- 995, ed. R. Latouche, 2 vols. (Paris, 1937), ii, 286; N. Housley, The ltalian Crusades (Oxford, 1982), 18- 19, 145- 53; Crouch, William Marshal, 195- 204; N. Vincent, Peter des Roches: An Alien in English Politics, 1205- 38 (Cambridge, 1996), 63.

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gathered to his summons: his great nobles offered service or not as circumstances dictated, while all his armies tended to melt away as the campaign began. At Caerlaverock a kind of pell-mell rush for glory wasted resources until the army became disciplined. Moreover, the whole development was transient: within a few years Edward II had undermined the machine of military success which had to be recreated by Edward III. The essential point is that the new administrative sophistication was not matched by systematic purely military institutions. The enhanced (but nonetheless limited) ability to service, support, administer, and feed an army was not accompanied by new institutions of command and control. For a regular army is not merely an instrument for the conduct of war - it is also an academy of war, and without continuity there was no forum for discussion and analysis through which new elites could emerge. 15 Aristocratic control of war everywhere protected lands and incomes from minor predators. Where monarchy was weak it was a condition of survival, and where strong an absolutely vital factor in securing political influence. In a changing world where new learning and new wealth challenged their monopoly and their eminence, the elite clung to the military function as a mark of their dominance. There were plenty of professionals of war, but in the absence of regular armies the only career structure open to them lay through the militarized households of the great, to whose dominance they were, therefore, required to pay homage. But military leaders could not be entirely immune to the influence of the new thinking. It is hardly surprising that the new learning made its greatest impact on war in architecture which demanded technical knowledge of a kind which the traditional military elite lacked. Castles were built where lords had land and incomes to defend, and shaped largely by their sites. By the mid-twelfth century stone was clearly the material of choice for the construction of castles and this demanded the employment of specialized skills. From about the same time conscious principles of design are evident, notably at Belvoir in the Holy Land where a concentric castle of striking power was built in 1168. From this time we hear of architects employed in royal retinues, the most famous of whom was Master James of St. George, whose Beaumaris, built for Edward I, is a masterpiece of design. It is no accident that such men were also responsible for siege-engines. The machinery of construction generated the technology of destruction, and such professional engineers improved the operation of existing equipment. The results of the discontinuity of armies were evident in this field as in any other. In 1097 the crusaders attacked Nicaea; Henry de Esch built an armoured roof to cover an attack by twenty knights, all of whom were killed when it collapsed. The building of such things took memory - to know what you wanted is not to know how to achieve it. These experts brought a technological skill developed by the age of cathedral building into warfare, but, significantly,

15 There are many studies of institutional development, notably by M. Prestwich, War. Politics and Finance under Edward I (London, 1972); Edward I (London, 1980).

II 82 they were not as well paid as the traditional warrior-class. 16 We should not exaggerate the impact of architectural technique upon war. Highly developed fortifications, especially concentric castles, remained rare because of their cost: far more important was the embodiment of the principles of interlocking defence into older structures and their adaptation . It was probably in such circles that a new weapon emerged, the counterweight trebuchet. This appeared very suddenly at the end of the twelfth century. The word trebuchet was first used in Italy in 1199, and by 1212 the thing itself is clearly and unequivocally described in the Song of the Cathar Wars. About 1270 the French engineer Villard de Honnecourt drew a plan for the building of a trebuchet and other descriptions survive by Egidio Colonna ca. 1280 and Marino Sanudo ca. 1320.1 7 The complex variables which have to be worked out to develop a satisfactory trebuchet, most notably the size of the counterweight in relation to the absolute length of the arm and the position of its pivot, the angling of the hook which launches the sling, the weight of the missile and the proposed range, suggest that mathematical skill underlay its development; the suddenness of its appearance points to its being an invention. Its effect on warfare was limited: it was a heavy weapon and therefore difficult to transport, demanded skills which were not always available and its range barely improved upon that of earlier machines like the perrier. Moreover its missiles were prone to shatter. It is often said that the lakes surrounding the castles at Kenilworth and Caerphilly were counter-measures against the trebuchet, but it is just as likely that they were intended to prevent mining. It was in architecture and siege-equipment that the new thinking made most impact because in these spheres technical knowledge had an obvious importance. But what of field-warfare and the conduct of campaigns and battles? Clearly there was no Dialogue of the Knights to parallel the famous Dialogue of the Exchequer. The nearest thing we have to a manual of war comes, significantly, from the Holy Land and from the Order of the Temple. In the famous Templar Rule there are careful instructions about organization and tactical movements which must have been practised and developed systematically. It is no accident that this manual of war was developed by the Military Orders: they 16 Belvoir is a Hospitaller castle. The site has been cleared, revealing its remarkable design, but there is as yet no authoritative publication. I have talked at some length to Ronnie Ellenblum of Hebrew University about it, and I would like to acknowledge my debt to his knowledge, while adding that I cannot blame him for my own conclusions; Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 284-7; Pounds, The Medieval Castle in England and Wales, 177-8; A. Taylor, 'Master Bertram, Ingeniator Regis', in Studies in Medieval History presented toR. Allen-Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill, J. Holdsworth, and J. Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989), 289-304; The King 's Works in Wales 1277-1330 (London, 1974); Albert of Aachen, Historia Hierosolymitana , in Recueil des historiens des Croisades, historiens occidentaux, iv, 321-2. 17 Iohannes Codagnellus, Annates Piacentini, ed. 0. Holder-Egger (Hanover, 1901), 25; William of Tudela and the Anonymous, Song of the Cathar Wars, trans. J. Shirley (Aldershot, 1996), 51, 54- 5, 141, 157-8; H.R. Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt (Graz, 1972), plate 59; Aegidii Romani, De regimine principum (Rome, 1561), 357-8; Marino Sanudo, Liber secretorumfidelium crucis, 2 vols. (Hanover, 1611), ii, 79-80.

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were a kind of standing army, albeit a very small one, living in an environment of almost constant war. Military bodies with such continuity were rare in medieval circumstances, and it is interesting that they produced a manual of war. 18 But one piece of war literature which has been regarded as influential is Vegetius' De re militari. Certainly a huge number of manuscripts of Vegetius and his Carolingian abbreviators, Rabanus Maurus and Freculph, circulated and it was much translated in the later Middle Ages. Of course manuscripts were de luxe articles, status symbols of the great and often used as diplomatic gifts, but we need to consider why manuscripts of Vegetius? There is one famous episode from the Historia Gaufredi ducis Normannorum et comitis Andergavorum in which Geoffrey le Bel, count of Anjou, was advised by a monk of Marmoutier to read De re militari to solve problems encountered during the siege of Montrueil-Bellay. However Geoffrey's assault on the castle owed nothing to Vegetius and the real point of the passage is to exalt Geoffrey as a learned count. 19 However this would have been useless as a piece of flattery if Vegetius had not been widely known. There is, moreover, another medieval reference to Vegetius, by a fighting man. Andrew of Hungary based his Latin account of the battle of Benevento in 1266 on a letter, originally written in French by a participant, a knight called Hugh of Bauches. In it Hugh tells us that the French were finding it difficult to get to grips with the strong and close-formed German formation of knights with long swords. Charles came and rallied his men, urging them to get in close and stab the Germans in the armpit with their daggers. This should not surprise us, the writer comments, for this was the advice of the book on the military art. And in fact this is the main thrust of Book 1.12 of Vegetius. Moreover this is picked up by Rabanus Maurus in chapter 7 of his De procinctu. 20 What is interesting is that the passage in Vegetius is found in Book 1 which is about Recruitment and Training. Rabanus Maurus' digest ofVegetius, De procinctu Romanae miliciae, is rather more than an antiquarian study. It focuses on a single theme - the 18 Richard FitzNige1, Dialogus de Scaccario, ed. C. Johnson, F.E.L. Carter, and D.E. Greenway (Oxford, 1983); J.M. Upton-Ward, The Rule of the Templars (Woodbridge, 1992), which reprints as an appendix the very important article by M. Bennett, 'La Regie du Temple as a Military Manual, or How to Deliver a Cavalry Charge ' , in Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen-Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill, J. Holdsworth, and J. Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989), 7-20. 19 There is a very useful translation of Yegetius, Epitome of Military Science, ed. N.P. Milner (Liverpool, 1993); H.N. MacCracken, ' Vegetius in English', in Anniversary Papers by Colleagues and Pupils of C.L.K. Heredge (Boston, 1913), 389-403; C.R. Schrader, 'A handlist of manuscripts of the De re militari of Flavius Vegetius Renatus', Scriptorium 33 (1979), 280-303; Rabanus Maurus, De procinctu Romanae militiae, ed. E. Dummler in Zeitschrift jlir deutches Alterthum 15 (1872), 443- 51 ; Freculph, MGH Epp. 5, 618-19; L. Halphen and R. Poupardin, ed., Historia Gaufredi ducis Normannorum et comitis Andegavorum in Chroniques des comtes d'Anjou et des seigneurs d'Amboise (Paris, 1913), 218; B.S. Bachrach, 'The Practical Use of Vegetius's De re militari during the Early Middle Ages', The Historian 21 (1985), 239-55 discusses and translates the passage about Geoffrey 1e Bel. 20 Andrew of Hungary, Descriptio Victoriae a Karolo Reportatae, MGH SS 26.575-7: Milner, Vegetius, 12; Dummler, De procinctu, 446-7.

II 84 training of troops, the need for it, and the fact that it was the key to the success of Roman arms. This emphasis on practical training probably explains why Vegetius was popular in the Middle Ages. So much of Vegetius must have appeared then, as it does to us, very removed from practical experience. But training was something that medieval nobles and knights knew about. In eleventh-century Normandy Arnold, eldest of the Giroie sons, was thrown against a stone step during a 'friendly wrestling match' and died within three days; his younger brother, Hugh, was skewered by a carelessly-thrown javelin while practising with friends. We have illustrations of quintains and other paraphernalia of training. There can be no doubt that elder knights passed on their wisdom and experience to the young, often in a very rough way. William Marshal was the butt of jokes after his first battle, because he had fought well but failed to profit from it by capturing men and equipment. 21 It seems likely that the emphasis on training was what made Vegetius popular, and that it underpinned and gave respectability to the training of the age. Military development in the period 1000-1300 remained firmly in the hands of the aristocratic elite. One symptom of this was the extraordinary investment in protective armour across this period. Towards 1300 this produced plate armour, a development which was at the very cutting edge of contemporary metallurgical technology. 22 Aristocratic households formed the military establishments of the age, and they were dominated by a conservative reaction to the new learning and its consequences. In these circumstances, while there must have been much discussion which sometimes threw up new ideas, these were not generalized and developed because there were no forums in which this could be done. The new learning might be welcome in some contexts, but its propensity to father new elites made it unwelcome in a military context. Even when specialists were needed - especially engineers and architects - they were kept at arms length, removed from the centres of command. The military households of great kings pointed the way to the future: that is why historians have devoted so much attention to them. 23 But they were too small, and the influence of politics and personality too great, to influence fundamentally the development of war in the period 1000- 1300.

OV ii, 23- 31; Crouch, William Marshal, 32- 3. 22 It is very interesting to note the space which scholars of arms and armour, while not ignoring developments elsewhere, dedicate to the weapons and annour of the elite. D.C. Nicolle, Arms and Armour of the Crusading Era, 1050- 1350, 2 vols. (New York, 1988) is a majestic and comprehensive compendium, but the emphasis is perhaps more apparent in older works which focus on Europe, notably C. Blair, European Armour, c.l066-1700 (London, 1958) and V. Norman, Arms and Armour (London, 1954). 23 J.O. Prestwich, 'War and Finance in the Anglo-Norman State', TRHS 4 (1954), 19-43; M. Chibnall, 'Mercenaries and the Familia Regis under Henry I', History 62 (1977), 15- 23; Prestwich, War, Politics. and Finance under Edward I are all fine examples of this kind of treatment. 21

III

A CHANGING BALANCE: CAVALRY AND INFANTRY, 1000-1300

Milites et pedites, that is how armies in the Middle Ages were usually described, and modern writing has provided an enormous focus on the former at the expense of the latter. We are, in fact, in the presence of a myth which dominated military history in the 12th and 13th centuries, the myth of the mounted knight and the idea that western soldiers "were accustomed only to one development of tactics- the shock-tactics of heavily-armed cavalry".

In a hot climate where horses tired easily, discipline was essential in the face of such provocation. In fact the mass charge seems to have been an eastern innovation, a development of western fighting methods. And it was possible precisely because in the principalities of the east 09>The

Rule of the Templars, ed. J. M. Upton-Ward, Woodbridge, Boydell

& Brewer,1992, pp. 59-61; for a study see M. Bennett, "La Regie du Temple

as a military manual, or How to deliver a cavalry charge", in C. Harper-Bill,

J. Holdsworth & ]. Nelson (eds.), Studies in Medieval History presented toR. Allen-Brown, Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewer,1989, pp. 7-20, reprinted by Upton-Ward as an appendix, pp. 175-188. For the conroi see J. F. Verbruggen, "La tactique militaire des armees de chevaliers", Revue du Nord, vol. 29, 1947, pp. 163-168. (zo>H. Nicholson (ed.), The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, Aldershot, Ashgate, 1997, p. 234.

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war was so frequent that knights became used to fighting together and, therefore, had the discipline to manage and control a mass chargerd. Pert.z, G. H . (eel.) 1839, 1925. Annalcs Cavenscs. In: MGH SS 3:185- 97. Hanover, Leipzi g. These cove r the period 569- I 3 I 5 on the bas is of o lder material. Pcrtz, G. H. (cd. ) 1844, 1925a . Ann a les Barenses , 605-1043 . In: '>l GH SS 5:5 3. Hanover, Leipzig. Pertz, C. H. (ed. ) 1839 , 1925b. Annalcs Bencventa ni , 788-1182. In: MGH SS 3: I 77. Hanove r, L eipzig. Pertz, G. H . (cd. ) 1844 , 1925c . Lupus Protospatarius, Chroni con. 803-1102. Tn: :VIGH SS 3:36-7. Hano ve r, Leipzig. Pert z, G. H. (eel.) 1866, 1925d. A nnalcs Cecca nenses . In: MGH SS I 9:275- 302. Hanover, Leipzig. T hese con'T the period from the creation to 12 17 and for the earl y eleventh cen tury depend up on the annals or La Cava and th ose of Monte Cassin o. Pontieri , E. (ed. ) 1928 . Gaufrcdus :\1ala terr a, D e rebus gestis Rogerii Calabri ae ct Siciliae comiti s et R oberti Guiscardi clucis fra tris eius. In: L.A . Nfuratori , R erum ltalicarum Scriptores 1 5 .1. Bolo~n a .

Ralph or Cae n. I 866. Gesta T a ncredi. In: RHC Occ. 3:60.1 . Paris. Riley-Sm ith , J. 1986. T he first crusade an d the idea of crusad ing. London. Robinson, I. S. 1973. Gregory Vll and the soldiers oC Chri st. Hi s torv 58:169-92. Schwarz, U. 1978. C hronico n Amalfitan um . In: Am alfi im fri.ihen Mittelalter 195-2 24. Tiibingen. Scwter, E. R. A. (eel.) 1933. :VIicha el P sellu s, Chronog ra phia (976-10 77 ) . London. Smidt, C. (ed. ) 1933 . Annales Casinenses . In: MG I-T SS 30 (2) :1408-9 . Leipzig. Smidt. W . I 926. Uber den V e rfasser cler clrei lctz ten R cd a ktio nen der C hronik Leos von ~1 on t e Cass ino. In: A. Brackmann (ed. ) Paps ttum und Kaiscrtu m, Forschunge n P a ul Kehr, 277-2BO. Munich.

VII

The Battle of Carcano: The Event and Its Importance

T

he battle of Carcano, fought on 9 August 1160, is now all but fo rgotten. It attracted some attention in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; 1 it is occasionally accorded a passing mention in accounts of the Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa's Italian campaigns.2 Recent writing on Frederick h as been concerned to examine the general thrust of his policy in Italy rather than its military aspects. As a result many recent books on the subject do not even mention the battle. 3 Yet it was an occasion when the emperor himself was in the field and was undoubtedly put to flight. Such events are rare; 16 years later Barbarossa was again d efeated in Lombardy at Legnano, a battle G.B. Testa, War of Frederick I Against the Communes of Lombanly (London, 1877), an English translation of the Italian 01iginal, Storia della guerra di h ederigo Primo contm i communi di Lombardia (Doncaster, 1853), pp. 253- 8; W. von C iesebrecht, Geschichte der /Jm"srhen Kai.wrzeit (6 vols, Brunswick, 1869-95), V (I) (281-7); W.F. Butler, "/'he Lombard Communes (London, 1906), p. 120. H. Dclbruck, History of the Art of War III: M edieual Warfare, tr. WJ Renfroe (Lincoln, 1982) , pp. 334-6, gives an accoun t of the battle, but it. is not clear what this is based on. H e is critical of the inf(mlla tion in Codagnellus but failed to recogni1e his classical sources noted below, p. 247; .J.F. Verbruggen, The Art of Wmfare in We.